


A Lovers' Harvest

by Snowgrouse



Series: Of Roses Unfurling [18]
Category: Thief of Bagdad (1940), كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة | Kitaab 'alf layla wa-layla | One Thousand and One Nights
Genre: (not of the underage kind), Age Difference, Age Regression/De-Aging, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anal Beads, Anal Fingering, Anal Gaping, Anal Play, Anal Plug, Anal Sex, Anal Sex (female receiving), Anal Teasing, Anal toys, Androgynous male character, Ass tasting, Ass to Mouth, BDSM, Bisexual Male Character, Bondage, Caning, Cock Rings, Comeshitting, Cowgirl Position, Cream enema, Cunnilingus, Dark Het, Deepthroating, Dirty Talk, Domestic Bliss, Dominant Male Character, Domspace, Ecstasy - Freeform, Enema drinking, Enema squirting, Enemas, Engineering, Erotic Dance, Exhibitionism, Extensive Anal Play, Eyeliner, F/M, Face-Sitting, Felching, Fellatio, Female Ejaculation, Flavored Lube, Fluff and Smut, Foreplay, French Kissing, Geekery, Genital Shaving, Guyliner, Hair-pulling, Hard BDSM, Held Down, Heroine/Villain, Het and Slash, Heterosexual Anal Sex (female receiving), Historical, Homosexual Anal Sex, Honeymoon, Hurt/Comfort, Hypnotism, Islam, Islamic Metaphysics, Jewelled sex toys, Jewellery, Lipstick & Lip Gloss, Long foreplay, Lube, Lube play, M/M, Magic, Magic as sex aid, Magic-Users, Manwhore Jaffar, Master/Slave, Master/Slave Roleplay, Masturbation, Medieval Islamic Science, Medieval Medicine, Medieval mysticism, Men with makeup, Middle Ages, Multi, Muslim Character(s), Mysticism, Oil, Older Man/Younger Woman, Orgasm Delay, PWP, Penetration with tongue, Perfume, Period Attitudes Towards Sexuality and Gender, Poetic, Pussy Tease, Queer Het, Resolved Argument, Retcon, Rimming, Robots, Roleplay, Romance, Rouged genitalia, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Science, Service Top, Sex Magic, Sex Robots, Sexual Roleplay, Shameless Smut, Skilled sex, Skullfucking, Slave Girl, Soul Bond, Spiritual, Spiritual sex, Stripping, Submissive Female Character, Subspace, Supernatural romance, Suspension, Telepathic Bond, Telepathic Bondage, Telepathic Sex, Tenderness, The Golden Age of Islam, The Thousand And One Nights - Freeform, Threesome - F/M/M, Tongues, Vines, Virginity, Wedded bliss, Whipping, delayed gratification, heterosexual anal sex, make-up sex, sub panic, wedding anniversaries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-12
Packaged: 2018-09-22 02:08:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 39,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9577475
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snowgrouse/pseuds/Snowgrouse
Summary: Jaffar and Yassamin celebrate their eleventh anniversary, revisiting the games they'd played as newlyweds: through Jaffar's hypnosis, Yassamin can live the part of an eager virgin and he her wicked, whip-wielding master once more.That, and Jaffar has also dusted off Sarosh...***"I would play the slave girl to you, my love: surrender myself unto you as completely as the believer's soul surrenders unto God."Moaning, he captures her in a deep kiss. "I'd hoped you would say that," he laughs with the delight of a boy. But then, the boy is gone and his majesty, his lordship, his puissance ravishes her once more: he crushes her in his embrace, just like that first night.As he pulls back, his eyes are heavy from desire and he is erect against her belly; just as her cunny's now tightening, aflutter between her legs. Hissing, he tugs upon her lower lip with his thumb; his eyes flash so pale his irises become as glass. Now, his voice is dark and sticky and coarse, pouring into her ears a black honey."Trust, wife, that I shall endeavour tomasteryou until you lie at my feet weeping, hoarse from screaming, dripping with my seed from every orifice,beggingme for mercy."





	1. Chapter 1

***

"The first glance from the beloved is like the Spirit that hovered over the face of the deep, out of which came heaven and earth;  
The first glance from the companion of life's way is as the word of God when He said: "Be.""

\--Kahlil Gibran

***

"It does wonders for bringing one back down to earth," Jaffar says as he dangles a piece of string for Mustafa to swat. The little black cat leaps a full two feet into the air over and over again, his mouth open as he attacks the string with teeth and claws, purring from the sheer delight of the play.

"What does?" Yassamin asks, not looking up from her book.

Jaffar chuckles and dances around the study, Mustafa following his every movement; now Jaffar hides the string behind his robe, now drags it up a seat for Mustafa to chase. "This!" he laughs. "The utter joy he takes in but a piece of string--look at that abandon! If we could all be as content with simple things the way children and animals are, the world would be much happier a place, I'll wager."

"Always the dreamer," Yassamin says, closes the book and comes to hug him from behind, kissing him on the cheek, Jaffar never ceasing his playing with the cat. "But that's why I love you, my sweet fool of a husband."

"Father!" Salsabil cries out from the corridor. "Father! Where on earth did you put The Book of Ingenious Devices? I can't find it _anywhere!_ "

"So much for children and simple pleasures," Yassamin laughs and peeks past Jaffar's shoulder, crying out into the direction of Salsabil's voice. "It's here in the study, Salsabil. But you can't have it yet. Your father and I need it for the new automatons we are building."

"But not yet!" Jaffar cries, turns around and plants a big, wet kiss on Yassamin's mouth; she stumbles back and accidentally steps on Mustafa's tail. The cat shrieks in agony and Yassamin staggers as she steps out of the poor cat's way; now, both she and Jaffar fall onto the cushions she had been reading on, Mustafa leaping away as fast as his little legs can take him.

Salsabil peeks in through the door and immediately, rolls her eyes at the sight of her parents entangled in an amorous embrace. "Not _again._ "

Jaffar pins Yassamin down playfully and rolls his hips into her, mimicking a wild, animal rut. "Quick, daughter! Plunder away while I hold back the enemy. Take the book while I still have your mother prisoner."

"I only need it for a few hours," Salsabil says as she picks up the book. "I've copied all but the last ten pages; I'm nearly finished."

"See?" Jaffar asks Yassamin, not looking up at Salsabil. "I will keep your mother busy while you do the copying," he says and begins to nip at Yassamin's neck until she yelps. "And you, my dear woman, should be proud of having a daughter who has copied an entire book on engineering at the age of seven!"

Yassamin moans in mock-indignation. "Mohammad won't like it," she mumbles. "He said he wants the fountains done in time for Nowruz. That's only seven weeks away!" 

For it is indeed a set of magical fountains Mohammad has commissioned from them, renovating as he is the gardens and the courtyards of the Afrasiyab palace complex to display his might and magnificence. He is, in fact, desperate to show the people of Samarkand he is still Sultan, especially now that Jaffar and Zainab's more modern palaces threaten to overshadow his own, admittedly ancient castle. Therefore, he has asked for an entire series of fountains to be built in this new garden of his, functioning not unlike waterwork versions of music boxes; wind them all up and each will gush out a sequence of flower-shaped sprays, so that visitors will be treated to a spectacular show of water-flowers as they walk through the garden. Lilies, lilies-of-the-valley, orchids and of course, jasmines are all on Jaffar's to-engineer list: however, refining the mechanisms for spraying out even one single flower-shape will take weeks. And to think Jaffar, in his madness, had promised Mohammad and Latifa two dozen of these things!

Jaffar raises his eyebrow. "We have djinn. I can have the fountains ready in a _month_ from now," he murmurs and continues to kiss Yassamin's neck. "Salsabil, you can go now," he says and turns to look at his daughter over his shoulder, but Salsabil has already disappeared with the book.

"What will you do if, one day--hypothetically speaking," Yassamin says and blows Jaffar's hair out of her face, "the djinn decide to one day leave us?"

"I have made sure they won't," he says and undoes the buttons on Yassamin's jacket, lifting out her breasts from the confines of her silken undershirt. "And I do not need the help of djinn to make sweet waters flow, now do I?" he leers and slips his hand between Yassamin's legs, stroking her cunny through her shalwars. "Waterworks are my middle--wait, first name," he chuckles.

Yassamin groans. "You'll need more than just appalling jokes to irrigate your wife's furrow," she says and squirms in his embrace. "Bed."

Jaffar but picks up the piece of string he'd been playing with and swiftly ties Yassamin's wrists with it, dropping a kiss on her nose. "Cushions. I insist."

Yassamin shakes her head. "Next, you will be in and out in five minutes and then tell me I should be content with the simple things in life."

Jaffar makes a mock-croon as he pulls his robe off over his head. "Never, my sweet, never. I intend to give Salsabil plenty of time to finish her work, you see," he says and pulls off Yassamin's shalwars, sighing happily as he settles to lie down on top of her, taking her breasts in his hands. "You know one should always encourage one's children in their learning," he says, kissing one breast, "and to keep one's wife satisfied in bed," he murmurs against another.

She twiddles her toes and grins. "And upon cushions?"

"Even more so," he laughs and kisses his way down her belly, tickling her all over as he goes.

"Stop!" she wails; she has always been ticklish, and Jaffar knows exactly how mad this drives her.

"I thought you said you didn't want a five-minute affair!" he says and lifts his head up from between her legs, his hair having escaped his ponytail almost completely by now. "I was but warming you up."

She caresses his bare back with her foot. "You're _almost_ in the right place to do it," she grins. "Just a little lower."

He closes his eyes and inhales from her sex, his nostrils fluttering from delight. "Mmm. You're right; my senses tell me there's water vein near. Now, if I but perform the right rituals--" but then he is kissing her cunny and neither of them can speak no more.

***

With another Nowruz, arrives another new year: and with it, their eleventh anniversary. Eleventh! Yassamin thinks to herself, dizzy from it all: for she still feels as if she is only just learning the life of a wife and a mother, every new day a bewildering wonder to her. But then, is this not what every woman feels? It's not as if--despite what the pagans would tell her--one gets several lifetimes during which to learn how to manage husbands and children. And hers are the most extraordinary husband and children of all: no old wife of her father's harem could ever have advised her on how to be wife to a sorcerer, and how to rear children who were not only exceptionally intelligent but magically gifted as well.

She and Jaffar must celebrate this extraordinary love with something special, the way they do every year; yet this spring, the hustle and bustle of Mohammad's renovation project has overburdened both her and Jaffar with work. There would be no sense in them having a day off all to themselves if they were but plunged back into the chaos of Afrasiyab straight after: therefore, they agree to celebrate only after Nowruz, when they are truly free to let go.

"That, and I want _several_ days off," Jaffar murmurs into Yassamin's neck, holding her from behind as they gaze down into the garden from the gallery outside her quarters. "A week. Already I ache all over. We'll leave the children with Latifa--"

"What makes you think she'll have them?" Yassamin laughs, hugging his arms around her waist.

"She owes us a favour--no, _several_ by now," he grumbles. "I made sure to start the construction work from near the harem, so she would be free of the noise quicker."

"And now you'll saddle her with this racket," she says and nods towards the children. They're now chasing each other around the garden with wooden swords and shields in hand, imitating Northmen, shrieking out the berserker war-cries Zainab had taught them.

"Don't be silly. She has four hundred serving-maids, and besides, the children love it there. I'm sure Salsabil will have to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the library again, and Anwar can hide from his cousins among the elephants. And before you say it, there is no need to feel guilty about it either, my love. You've deserved a holiday from mothering, too."

"You _have_ got something special planned," she smirks flirtatiously and turns around in his embrace. "But no orgies. I want it to be just you and I."

He kisses her nose. "Just you and I, celebrating our journey together. In fact, it's going to be very much about our journey indeed--I might as well tell you now. For I've been studying the art of spirit-memory for quite a while now, the way our experiences and our memories, everything we say and do, are imprinted onto the fabric of the spirit world, remaining there for all time."

She raises her eyebrow. "Is this one of the Dakini's teachings?" For it sounds exactly like the concept the pagans call _karma_ \--just when Yassamin had been thinking of reincarnation, too! She must have been picking up Jaffar's thoughts again, to have even thought of the concept. 

"It is in line with the Prophet's teachings, too. Only _we_ think of it as angels writing down all our actions in God's books. Whichever way you look at it, it is a very real phenomenon, and that is what I want us to explore. Now, the Dakini taught me a trance technique by which one can experience specific events from one's past very vividly, in order to learn from them. The followers of the Buddha use this technique to examine the actions they believe themselves to have committed in past lives, but you and I would only be looking back at our own pasts. In short, I believe there is a way for us to... return, as it were, into our minds as they were when we first wed, yet carry into this experience the wisdom and the experience of our current selves."

Her heart leaps. "So that we would come to each other as bride and groom once more?" she says, searching Jaffar's eyes, excited. "Is that what you mean? So that we could live again our wedding night?"

He beams as he nods at her, his eyes glowing a bright blue in the setting sun's light. "Aye. You got it right the first time. Although I promise not to take an entire week to deflower you this time," he chuckles and rocks her in his arms. "I mean but the novelty, the sense of wonder we possessed then--when we were learning each other for the first time. The love-games, I would have be something entirely new, not merely us going through the exact same things we did before. Who knows, we might even learn things we never knew about each other--simply because we forgot to mark them the first time!"

"My God!" she laughs, resting her hands over his heart, casting down her eyes. "I am terrified. I was so awkward, so clumsy, so frightened of you..."

"Already you are reverting to the mood of a virgin, then!" he laughs and claps his hands over her buttocks; she knows exactly how much the idea of a quivering virgin arouses the beast in him. "And it would indeed be a great pleasure, not to mention an honour for me, to undo all your fears once more, to enfold you in my love once more..." His voice lowers into a purr and he picks up her chin with his hand, his eyes glittering from wickedness. "And to _conquer_ you once more." 

She shivers, from both terror and arousal; already it is as if eleven years were nothing and she were but the maiden in her father's harem, being whispered to by her djinni in her mirror. Oh, but she loves this, adores this, adores _him,_ never not in awe of Jaffar's erotic creativity and his passion, the sheer depth and the sheer vastness of his love; already she feels as if two different Yassamins are moving within her at the same time. Deep within her stirs the innocent, yet eager virgin with a world of perversities budding within her, awaiting for her dark lover to nurture them into bloom; and around this maiden, Yassamin the mature wife and wise witch, the woman who enjoys the deepest of spiritual communions with Jaffar her husband, the one whose love she knows to be as strong and as true as that of God himself.

"What say you, my sweet?" he says, smiling; for he has heard her thoughts, but would hear her voice them out loud. "It would please me greatly to at least try."

She takes his hand and kisses his palm, leaning her cheek into it, sighing in adoration. "And you know that your pleasure is always my pleasure also. However, I have one condition."

"And that is?"

"You said we should not repeat what we did before, and I agree... but for one thing." She closes her eyes and flashes him the memory of that night in his tent, the first time he had taken her like a boy: the sweet terror and the sweeter arousal she had felt then. The shock of pleasure his cane had brought her, the sheer intensity of being sodomised for the first time-- _oh, my love, I truly thought I would **die**_ \--but most of all, the ecstasy she had felt in surrendering herself so completely unto him and being rewarded so utterly; of being able to so trust her body into his hands, plunging into the deepestmost, darkestmost abyss of helplessness only to be caught by him, carried to safety in his embrace. 

_That is what I would again feel from you, beloved,_ she now whispers into his mind, too shy to put it into spoken words, the shock of her own perversion still making her shiver from its vastness; _to play the slave girl to your master once more. So that I might surrender myself unto your love as completely and as utterly as the believer's soul surrenders unto God._

And he is there to catch her: with a moan, he captures her in the deepest of kisses, his tongue trembling against hers, his spirit rushing into her so that she can feel the tears prickling underneath his eyelids as her own. _I had hoped you would say that,_ he laughs into her mind with the delight of a little boy. But then, the little boy is gone and his majesty, his lordship, his puissance ravishes her once more: he crushes her in his embrace, just as he had crushed her against his chest that first night, and she moans into his mouth in sweet terror and delight.

When Jaffar pulls back, his eyes are heavy-lidded from desire, and he is erect against her belly; just as her cunny is now tightening, aflutter between her legs. With a hiss, he pulls upon her lower lip with his thumb, his erection pulsing against the heat of her body; his eyes flash with a light so pale his irises become as glass. When he speaks, his voice is dark and sticky and coarse, pouring into her ears a black honey.

"Trust, wife, that I shall endeavour to _master_ you until you lie at my feet weeping, hoarse from screaming, dripping with my seed from every orifice, _begging_ me for mercy."

She cannot bear it any longer. With a great cry, she falls to her knees and presses her face to his groin, kissing his erection feverishly through his silks. "I love you," she moans, wetting his silks with her saliva and her tears, laughing at the madness of it all, her cunny so hot and so wet between her legs that she _aches._ To hear him use that voice with her--it's been so long since she had last heard it, the commanding cadence of her Jaffar the beast, the one to tear all her sorrows to pieces, the one to swallow her sadnesses entire. "Say that again."

He but groans as he can smell her cunny, laughs and cards his fingers through her hair, yelping as she gropes for his prick. "I love you, too, and there's more filth where that came from. But come, my sweet, get up; the children will see us."

"I don't care! Cast a spell."

"I cast _twenty-five_ at the palace today!" he laughs. "I'm too tired for magics. But I think I just _might_ have the energy for--" he groans and picks her up in his arms and begins to carry her to the bedchamber, "at least a _minor_ ravishment," he says and kisses her nose, she screaming and giggling in his arms, twiddling her feet so that her slippers dangle off her toes. "Perhaps even a medium ravishment, if my slave girl prepares me a cup of wine I can fortify myself with."

"To hear is to obey, my lord and master," she simpers at him with the sweetest of croons and wraps her arms around his neck, planting a kiss on his nose in turn. "To hear is to obey."


	2. Chapter 2

And so, the day arrives when Yassamin and Jaffar finally have each other all to themselves, and can dedicate an entire week to but lovemaking. The children are with their aunt and their uncle; the work at the palace has been finished, all burdens and responsibilities finally moved aside. 

And just as the new year takes her first trembling virgin steps into the sun, so does Yassamin take hers into their bedchamber. With shy, bare feet, she steps into the light of her own sun: Jaffar her bridegroom, Jaffar her master, Jaffar her king.

Yet it is not Jaffar she now sees before herself, and immediately, she can see why. 

For on a small table before her stands a pristine white porcelain vase, and within it, a single blue rose. 

A shiver goes through her; all hair on her body stands on end and she wants to weep, from both joy and from utter terror as the memory of that day--and what it had meant to her--now returns to her in full. This, the turning of her entire life; this, the turning of her entire mind--the power within this single flower to change an entire person, to direct the course of an entire lifetime! To even think of what could have gone wrong--oh, it does not bear thinking about, yet she thinks of it still. The careful magics Jaffar will have had to perform then, and now, so as not to--Merciful God, could the flower have slain her? Made her a gibbering idiot forever? Only now does she even fully consider such outcomes; for is this rose not a physician's scalpel, this entire spell a surgery of the soul? And just as the doctor with his scalpel, a magician has to wield his instrument with great care, knowing there is but a hairsbreadth of difference between a cut that heals and a cut that maims, slays.

But it is then that she reminds herself of the facts, of how the fear at the back of her mind is but an exaggeration: the original rose had been nothing but an unveiling of truth, making her forget that which had not been real, healing her mind of fancies that had nearly cost her her life, her happiness. Just like a surgeon, Jaffar had removed from her her delusions, pulled back the veil Ahmad had thrown over it; once it had been removed, she had been able to see Jaffar for whom he really was--the djinni in her garden, the one who loved her the most and cared for her the most. 

As for this particular rose--Jaffar himself had told her that this time, the rose was to be a door through which they could step back into that day. A returning to that space of desire and joy they had both inhabited, then, that trance of hope high and love deep: the dream of a love lived, a lifetime shared.

She draws in a deep breath and shudders once more; she wants to speak, wants to call out Jaffar's name, but her voice catches in her throat, strangled by a deep, profound sob. 

Holding her breath, she steps up to the rose, tilting her head, marvelling at it, caressing its petals with her fingertips; she is shaking so much she nearly topples the vase and has to balance it with her hands. Jaffar is nowhere to be seen: yet, it is more than obvious to her what she must now do to summon him back, to summon back her very own virgin self. 

She closes her eyes, whispers a prayer and inhales.

The petals of the blue rose flutter as veils before her, behind her, above her, below her and forever; she falls and falls forever. 

The blue silks of her dress flutter about her and she falls, falls, forever;

The blue of Jaffar's laughing eyes flickers behind her eyelids and she falls, falls forever;

Onto the cushions upon the floor of her king's bedchamber she now falls, falls--and finally, lands. 

"Who are you?" a voice asks her.

She blinks and sits up upon the cushions: still, the room is empty, and the speaker is nowhere to be seen. She has the distinct feeling she should have forgotten who she is, but now she does indeed remember, better than ever: with the knowledge of age, a life lived, she knows very well the maiden being addressed.

She is Yassamin of Basra, and her life is about to begin.

"Who are you?" the voice asks her once more. Now, she can tell it is the voice of a man, yet with the cadence of a woman; this voice is a voice tender, soft, feline. Yet even Yassamin the maiden is old enough to know that even within the gentlest of housecats lurks a predator, a killer, a beast. 

She stands up and straightens herself out, bold with all the dignity afforded to her by her upbringing; through her lips now speaks the queen who is yet to become one. "I am Yassamin, daughter of Mahmoud, Princess of Basra."

"That's good," the voice tells her, purring, and within his tone she can hear a slight amusement. "What else do you remember? What brought you here?" the man asks, and in that moment, she knows it is for her own sake that he is asking her this. 

Therefore, Yassamin the queen closes her eyes and listens to Yassamin the princess; Yassamin the mother of Salsabil and Anwar turns her ear to the daughter of the Sultan of Basra.

She is thirty-two, yet again twenty-one; a hopeless old maid, the women of her father's harem would call her, not only behind her back but into her face: most girls would have become mothers by the time they were fourteen. Poor Yassamin, poor Yassamin, she would die virgin, the women would lament and shake their heads: her father guarding her so jealously he would only accept proposals from the highestmost of families, and even then, Yassamin--in her foolish pride--would reject each and every suitor presented to her from behind her lattice, her veil.

She was already betrothed to another, she would tell them, and in turn, all would tell her they thought her mad: for this bridegroom of hers was a bridegroom invisible.

But no, no; not for her the princelings of noble families, no matter how handsome and how rich and how kind. 

For only her djinni, the djinni of her pool loved her with a love that was true; only the dark prince in her mirror, only the caress of the warm breeze in her garden that whispered unto her, sung unto her his love thus:

 _Wait, my sweet child, but wait;_  
_Wait for the day of my arrival._  
_For soon, in no time at all_  
_I shall come for you, yes;_

_Come for you I shall indeed_  
_With great pomp and great ceremony:_  
_But look to the skies, my sweet,_  
_And there you shall see a man_  
_Upon a horse white, shining, bewinged._

 _One day, my beloved sweet_  
_I shall draw aside the veils_  
_That have kept us apart_  
_And you shall be able to gaze upon my face indeed:_  
_But look to your beloved pool, my sweet_  
_And there, you will see my face reflected._

_Soon, soon, my beloved sweet_  
_The day of our joining shall come:_  
_But await the toppling of a tyrant_  
_And the rise of a new shahanshah_  
_A new star, they'll say, in Baghdad's sky._

_Then, my beloved sweet,_  
_Then, I shall come._  
_But look for these signs_  
_And by them you shall know_

_Oh, by these signs_  
_You shall, Beloved, know indeed_  
_That Love himself has come_  
_To carry you home._  


_Aye, my dearly sweet Beloved_  
_Then you and the entire world shall know_  
_Love himself_  
_For you_  
_Has come._  


Of course, it had not been so easy, not so simple at all: again, Yassamin swoons as the fumes of the blue rose enter her nostrils and pull back all the veils that had guarded her from her Jaffar. Again, she feels her heart smashed to pieces as the magic of the fragrance reveals Ahmad for an impostor, but a fool who had stumbled into her garden the very day her true love, Jaffar, had come to take her away. She had felt so humiliated, like the vilestmost of whores, terrified of how easily she'd been ready to give up her virtue to the first idiot who'd blundered his way into her garden. And all this while her true prince--her guardian angel, the one who had watched over her for years and nurtured her with great patience and great care--had been on his way to ask for her hand in the honourable manner!

The adult Yassamin is still terrified of this, of what could have happened, but now, she also carries within herself the memory of Jaffar merely laughing about this now, brushing it off as if it were nothing. Always, whenever she has been flagellating herself over her looseness and her stupidity, he has rushed in to insist it had been all his fault. It had been _his_ influence he had blamed for her eagerness and her lustfulness; always, he tells her of how her wanton throwing of herself at Ahmad had merely proved how much desire Yassamin had had for _him,_ Jaffar, her true djinni.

"I had set a fever in your brain, a storm in your heart, a fire in your hips," Jaffar had said and held her tight when she had been weeping out her shame in his arms. "It was only out of your great love for me and your great faith in me that you were ready to run away with him, to risk your very life to be with him. And all because of a wicked wizard who, in his selfishness, had corrupted your young mind! I am the one to blame for so having groomed you, having tried to make you into the perfect wife for myself. I had shown you so much in my mirror, promised you the world with my magics, so intoxicated you with my offerings that I had made your head spin--it was no fault of yours that you mistook him for me. The chance of such a confusion, of someone else stealing what had been meant to be _my_ entrance--why, my sweet, it was astronomical!" he had groaned and shaken his head. "No, my love: if you must blame anyone, call anyone overly lustful, let it be me."

But now, this vision is gone, and Yassamin is in the darkness once more, again travelling backwards, backwards: into that quivering bud of her maidenhood, the folded petals of her self but awaiting his kiss to unfurl in sweet love.

"Come, my love," he now whispers to her once more: her eyes are closed, but she can feel his body's heat. It is a heat she has never known, the heat of a man's body against her own: yet at the same time, she swoons at the knowledge of having known this heat _four thousand times before._ Four thousand times has the Earth revolved around the Sun as she has been revolving around this heat, circumambulating his love, Jaffar her very own Kaaba. And while the maiden Yassamin would have shocked herself thinking this, worrying she was blaspheming, the grown Yassamin knows better than to doubt this knowledge: for she knows for certain that it is in the shape of Jaffar that God has sent His love to guide her, to protect her upon this earth.

"Come, my love," the soft purr of a pard in her ears, and the heat of Jaffar's hand takes hers. "Open your eyes."

She does.

"Welcome," he says, and her vision swims: simultaneously, two visions slotted over each other, she sees Jaffar stepping in through the cabin door upon his ship and stepping in through the door of this, their shared bedchamber. 

But now, everything in this room is different: with his magic, Jaffar has dressed it exactly as that cabin upon his black ship. She can see the contours of the real room underneath the mirage, if she but concentrates hard enough: yet his magic is persistent, and spreads out before her that red bed she had so dreaded, upon which he had almost ravished her. 

"Correct, my sweet," he chuckles, and again he is wearing a suit of blue velvet; he twirls his riding cane in his fingers and dances his way up to her, tickling her chin with its sharply pointed tip. "And I intend to rectify that mistake. I have been meaning to, for some time, you see," he grins.

The adult Yassamin rolls her eyes. "I only wish you hadn't made the room sway like a ship;" she says, "for soon I will be seasick!"

"Talking back this soon, are we, my slave?" he laughs and taps her cheek with his cane, a little more briskly this time, enough to sting a little. "You _are_ eager for your punishment."

She takes a hold of the cane. "I mean it."

And she must, indeed, be turning a little green: with a little huff of frustration, Jaffar waves his hand and the room stills. He glances around himself, and after a moment's thought, he changes the setting entirely: now, they are in an opulent bedroom, not too different from the sort he had occupied in Baghdad, exactly the sort of private entertaining-chamber a sultan would choose for getting better acquainted with a new mistress. Upon the floor lie thick pillows and mattresses, all richly embroidered in warm yellows, browns, golds and reds; beside the bed sits a silvern tray with tiny little silvern cups, arranged around an ornate crystal ewer full of wine.

"Does this please my lady better?" he now asks, twirling the cane in his fingers.

"Much better," she says, smiling so hard her face aches. 

It is then that he glances down at himself, and decides to do away with the blue velvet suit as well. Long ago, he had told her he had only worn plain blue clothes as a sign of mourning for his family, but now is not the time for mourning, not any longer. He murmurs a rune, and soon, he stands before her in but a long white tunic and white shalwars, all ivory silk embroidered with gold, a suit worthy of a noble bridegroom.

"How about now, my lady?"

"Never have my eyes beheld such beauty," she murmurs with the utmost sincerity, taking him in. He looks eleven years younger, yet with those wonderful, feminine touches his sex-changing magics have given to his skin: his cheekbones are less severe, the skin of them softer as his hair falls down on either side of them in soft black waves. He had been a formidable sight, then, but now, he is all that and more: being possessed of all the knowledge he has gathered in these past eleven years, all the things he has learned of himself and of the arts of love and of magic--now, more than ever, he looks a man who could conquer an empire with but a _glance._

Yet now, this empire is solely that of love: for it is in love that he has grown into his true kinghood, learning the intricacies of his desires, his true inner self in his communion with her. If it were not for Yassamin, he would never have known the pleasures of sodomy again, let alone their most profound depths; without her encouragement, he would never have come to explore, understand and embrace his innate twin-sexedness so. Through their marriage, he had been reborn not only a new man, but a new woman, growing not only in the love of women but of men, also; this, and through her Sapphic side, he has learned so much from the love between women, too. Truly, were it not for their mutual committment to free love and the cherishing of rather than suffocation of their more unusual desires, he would only ever have known a fraction of the entire human experience of love, that narrow strip reserved for the love between ordinary men and women.

But now, he sets the cane aside and comes to embrace her, cupping her cheeks in his hands. "But listen to yourself, woman!" he says, having heard her thoughts; he shakes his head, his eyes crinkling from a melancholy smile. "You are thinking of but me, thinking of what _I_ have learned, when it is you who have learned all of this, also; this, and much more besides."

She frowns. "You are right. Perhaps it is because I am a woman and have been born to nurture others. Therefore, that is what my eye catches on, that that is what I think of first: but the results of my nursing of my husband and my children. When it is you who have mothered me even more--" she now sighs and presses her head to his chest, listening to his calm, even heartbeat. "It is you who have given birth to me in turn, son of Yahya. Know that. You have never been to me but a mere husband, but also mother, father, brother, friend."

He rocks her in his arms and inhales her hair. "Look at us. So soft in our old age. Eleven years ago, we would have already been at it with whips and chains!" he chuckles. "And here we tarry, but marvelling at each other."

"That's something that's _never_ changed," she corrects him and lifts her head to look up into his eyes, those eyes that still make her heart skip a beat, lined as they are with the wisdom of the years they've shared. "Just like newlyweds, we still spend eternities but praising each other and the wonders of our love, and I would never change that, ever," she says and tiptoes up to kiss his cheek.

"I am done, now, however," he grins and with a flick of his fingers, he makes the cane fly into his hand. "I believe it was a ravishment we were about to perform, _slave._ "

"Show-off," she mutters, letting out a loud squeak as he swats her across the buttocks. 

But he is no longer playful; he takes a few steps back and bends the cane in his hands, altogether serious, now. He clears his throat and glowers at her from underneath the darkness of his brows, fixing his eyes upon her like twin blue blades. "If you don't mind, I would prefer for my slave to address me as ' _master._ '"

"Master," she whispers, casting down her eyes, willing herself into seriousness. The time for playful banter is over: she takes her place in the centre of the room and humbles herself, making herself smaller, less the proud queen and more like the slave girl she has been yearning to become. 

And it's easy, now, with the awkwardness of the maiden Yassamin now taking over her consciousness once more: her younger self returns as swiftly as she had parted, all of her confusion now rippling through Yassamin's flesh, her rapid heartbeat now thundering in Yassamin's ears.

She dares a glance from underneath her eyelashes at Jaffar, and he, too, seems younger: there is a spring to his step as he paces around the room, the way he always does as he gathers his concentration for this kind of play. This is another means of raising energy for him; this, she knows: like winding up one of his clockwork automatons, he gathers tension and power into his body, becoming taller, stronger, more fluid in his movements with each step he takes. Step by step, he leaves his gentle philosopher self behind, and again becomes the tyrant Caliph all of Baghdad had feared, the master of tortures, the scourge of his enemies--and the terror of all maidens. 

So much does this old darkness now radiate from him that Yassamin fears it will possess him entirely, turn him completely into the monster he had been before: panicking, she tries to remind herself that it was thanks to her love that Jaffar had finally begun to tame that beast. It was thanks only to the love he'd felt for Yassamin that he had become the kinder, gentler Jaffar who had understood love and happiness were more important to him than absolute power: it had been thanks to the life he had wanted to lead with Yassamin and their future children that he had relinquished the throne.

Yet, in those eyes that now look up at her from his pacing, those children are as of yet unborn: vicious, his old hatred for Harun blazes in his eyes with a bright flame, the bitter gall of his family's fate still burning fresh upon his lips. Even if she and Jaffar had sworn to limit telepathic contact during this encounter, to make it feel as fresh as possible, Yassamin can still imagine vividly the way he now feels the heavy embroideries of his suit brushing the long, ugly scars upon his back; hatred and distrust still flash through these younger eyes as Jaffar regresses back into that man who had first taken her, and visibly, he shudders. For a moment, it looks as if he wants to back out of this play, hating his old self so much; it's almost as if he is about to bend over and be sick, that he is this close to vomiting out this terrible, embittered wretch that he used to be.

But it is for her sake that he holds on to this man, for she had wanted in her bedroom Jaffar the beast: now, he stands still in the middle of the room, some five feet in front of her and takes her in, his bride.

No, not merely his bride: for she is the woman whose love is to carry him through this, carry him out of this, the one who with her submission shall be sucking out all his poison and pouring her love upon him a balm. He takes his cane in both hands and looks at it: this is to be the conduit, the instrument through which this drawing of the poison shall be performed, the tool with which he shall be lashing out his bitterness, exorcising it from his body to be neutralised by hers. Again, he looks up at her, and she looks back at him, trembling and afraid, but wanting this, needing this: the adult Yassamin is so exhausted from their weeks of toiling that they both know it is only pain that will truly banish her restlessness from her, only the whip that shall tear off the anguish now weighing so heavy upon her shoulders.

And within this ritual lies the key: the woman to whom pain is pleasure turning tyrant into healer, torturer into physician, poison into medicine. The man, the woman, the whip: the three of them now forming the greatest of alchemical formulae--turning the actions of hate and fear and anger into those of care and compassion and love. 

When he speaks, his eyes are full of a sorrowful gladness; with a little laugh, he sniffs back tears--it is not time for them yet--and gestures upwards with his hand. "Raise your arms, my sweet. I would undress you, you see," he says and taps his palm with his cane, "with this."

Her breath stops; her eyes fly wide. Yet, at the same time, her cunny clenches so that she staggers, pulse upon pulse of heat shooting through her body from between her legs. Her dress and her shalwars are of thin silk, with dozens of little buttons: this might take a while, and she swallows in true terror.

Yet, she raises her arms, never taking her eyes from his, noble even in her submission. "Yes, my lord and master," she whispers.

He pulls back his arm and his eyes are wide, terrible; there is but the white flash of his teeth, and her stomach lurches in terror.

He strikes her across the abdomen, and immediately, the pain is so horrendous her knees buckle and she falls. She would scream, but cannot: the pain is too great for her to even think, her consciousness now almost entirely severed from her by but this one blow. Only dimly, can she feel as Jaffar's magic wraps about her wrists like manacles and mercilessly, he drags her up towards the ceiling until she is tiptoeing upon the floor. Another strike, a third: so swiftly does he beat her that she cannot even tell where he has hit her, now, the pain of it too great, the shock of it consuming her entire body so that she feels she is but flesh hanging there, a carcass hung in a butcher's shop. 

Reeling from the pain, she stares down at herself and realises her dress now hangs from her in tatters: her breasts lie bare and her head lolls to her chest, her hair ornaments dangling miserably from her hair as she droops there, her hair brushing her knees. She is wordless, noiseless from pain, the wide ribands of agony across her belly and chest stinging so much that her eyes fill with tears; dimly, she can feel Jaffar tearing the rest of her gown off with his hands and tossing the ruined fabric aside, leaving her only in her shalwars. 

Finally, he comes to stand in front of her; she is too weak to lift her head and can only see his feet, as bare as her own. 

He taps at the back of her neck with his cane. "Up."

She lifts her head, and her hair falls over her face; she hiccoughs for breath, each breath making the welts upon her chest and belly burn all the more, spreading the tingling agony all the way to her fingers and her toes. Therefore, she can only keep her head up if she tries not to breathe at the same time: eventually, he has to hold her head up with his hands when he notices she is not breathing.

And it is this last thing that seems to utterly terrify him. He tucks his cane underneath his arm and combs her hair from her face. "My poor child," he murmurs and studies her with his eyes. "And yet, you need not tell me what you feel--you feel as if you have still not had enough," he says, his voice thin from worry. "But I would not maim you permanently. I am warning you now: you are going to have to take your fill from the next few strokes. I am going to take off your drawers with them, but beyond that..." his eyes flicker back and forth; he can sense she has trouble focusing on his words. "Do you understand?"

And now, she panics. He has only just begun: the fact that she can even panic means that she most definitely hasn't had enough, has not yet had the demons of worry and anguish beaten out of her. Will only a few more strokes be enough? Will he leave her here, hanging, unfulfilled, still aching? 

Suddenly, she springs to life: he still holding her, she begins to toss in her invisible chains, thrashing like a panicking horse. "No!" she cries, as if he had just threatened her with a hundred lashes; "No!"

Yet he takes a step back and lets her dangle there, kick there, shriek: this is the most awful, most cruel of his brutalities, him letting her doubt him like this, fear disappointment like this. It is the worst nightmare of the pain-glutton: to have to fear not being satisfied, to have to fear being abandoned. And right now, the very idea of it is akin to having him remove his love from her entirely, and she bursts into hysterical sobs. "Please. Please, master! I beg of you! Do not leave me now, please. I will do anything--anything--!"

His jaw tightens and he raises his arm; his own eyes fill with terror as he delivers the next blow, so violent across her lower belly that her eyes flash white and she falls limp in her chains. White, white and red, the pain flashes through her as he whips her and he whips her: her drawers fall off her in tatters as he lashes her across the thighs, the buttocks, until all is black and her eyes roll back in her head.

When she comes to her senses, she has been lowered to a kneeling position, the cane lying on the floor before her, the tiniest spatter of blood upon its tip. And beside it, her husband's bare feet, glittering with fresh tears.

"Yassamin..." she lifts her head and sees his fists, clenching and unclenching by his sides, all of him trembling. "Yassamin," he rasps. 

But why does he not embrace her? Is he afraid he has broken her? Is he afraid he has not given her enough? Oh, he needn't worry: she is floating in a pain-trance of happiness, now--completely sated. 

_Sated, sated,_ she thinks at him, so loosened now from her self that she forgets their rule of no telepathy; she is so far beyond speech it is the only way she can communicate with him, and sends to him her apology just as she sends to him her satiation, her happiness, asking _but why won't you embrace me, my sweet?_

There is cool silver upon her lips and he is pouring cold water into her mouth: blessed, sweet cold water, flavoured with mint. _Just like the water your ghost brought me when your father's guards had been whipping me,_ he tells her, his laughter soft from tears as he releases her from her chains; _I had always wanted to return the favour._

"How are you, my love?" he asks out loud and brushes her hair aside from her face, holding her close, both of them kneeling upon the floor.

"Cleansed," she says. And she shows to him this new purity of hers: only now that he has whipped away the pain and the stress of the adult, present-day Yassamin can the maiden Yassamin truly take her place within her, live and breathe and stretch her limbs. She feels so young, a child in his arms, just as she had felt when she had come to him for the first time. " _Now,_ we can start," she mumbles, laughs. 

He shakes his head and kisses her hair. "Some foreplay," he laughs. "You terrified me, there."

"You, however, did not terrify me nearly enough," she says, but there is no mockery to her voice, only tenderness as she looks up into his eyes, her head now nestled into the crook of his arm. 

"I'll show you terrifying!" he exclaims, mock-indignant. But for a brief moment, he dips into her mind, examining the damage he has wrought, the levels of her pain, then sighs with relief. "I merely wanted to make sure you could still pleasure me afterwards, you see," he says, pretending full selfishness, affecting true cruelty, his eyes twinkling with mischief. "You cannot very well milk my prick while unconscious," he says and smacks her on the arse. "Now, for your slave girl fantasy. Or is it the boy you wanted to play?"

"The girl," she says, squirming happily in his arms, suddenly awake, alive, bright; always, always his canings and whippings have this strangely invigorating effect on her, as if a cup of coffee opening her eyes to the morning sun, waking her up entirely. 

"All right," he says and ruffles her hair. "But a moment. Stay there."

She thinks he has to fetch something, but instead, this moment is one he needs but to rearrange himself upon the cushions, fashioning of himself the very picture of foppish vanity: he pours himself a little cupful of wine and sips it, sprawling upon the bed with the arrogance of a youth. He fluffs up some cushions and leans back against them, spreading his legs, cupping his prick through them, groaning luxuriously. 

She so, so much wants to tell him that already he is reminding her too much of Fadl, but instead, she bites her tongue; from the mirth in his eyes over the brim of his cup, she is sure he has heard her, too, but cares not. He sips long from his cup and sets it down on the tray with a loud clank, letting out an exaggerated sigh of delight. 

"Now, then," he drawls, smacking his lips, beckoning to her, even the way he crooks his finger with slow, pointed curls a masterwork of audacity. "Let's see what we've got here. I don't know _why_ they brought me such a _tall_ girl," he pouts, his voice high from mockery as he runs his eyes up and down her naked figure. "Pity."

She swallows, but is unable to resist challenging him--virgin slave girl or no, she has never not been proud. "Would you like me to leave, then, master?"

"Noo, no, no, no," he croons, twirling his hand elegantly so that his sleeve falls to his elbow; he clasps her hip, pressing his thumb into her hipbone, drumming his fingertips across the curve of her buttock. "Come closer," he says and tilts his head, not taking his eyes off her sex, the very flicks of his lashes feeling like licks upon her slit, and she shivers. "I would like to examine this cunny first--after all, not _all_ tall girls are loose on the inside." He looks up at her, leering. "Tell me, are you tight?"

Were this any other man, she would have given him a black eye by now; she clenches her fists and fumes, while her cunny clenches just as violently. "I wouldn't know about that, master," she says coolly. "To men with small pricks, even thimbles would feel like buckets," she quips. 

He hisses and presses his nails into her buttock. "I like a girl with spirit," he laughs, then glances down at himself. "I am not one of Madam Thimble's brethren, as you must already have noticed. But let's see... come here. That's it, straddle my face," he says as he guides her to stand with her legs on either side of his shoulders. "Spread yourself. Let me see what my money has bought me."

Never has she been so humiliated! Yet the harlot within her loves this, even as she struggles to maintain her position. It's incredibly difficult for her to remain standing on the soft cushions in the first place, let alone now that she has to spread her legs over his face and squat a little: yet, she is determined to stay calm. Taking a deep breath, she spreads her cunny with both hands; by now, she is so aroused it gives her pain to even touch herself, so heavy and so packed with blood are her cunny's lips, her folds. And again, she is clenching, unable to stop her cunny from tightening as his breath caresses her wet, swollen flesh; why, he is practically panting underneath her, his eyes wide, his mouth open as he stares at her bared sex.

It is then that he _sniffs_ her, sniffs her like a vile animal; she lets out a horrified cry and shudders. "Master!"

But it is at that that a drop of her wetness falls out of her cunny, straight onto his cheek: "Oh, my, God!" he cries, letting out a loud laugh-moan as he wipes his face with his hand. "My, my," he says and licks her taste off his fingers, looking into her eyes past her breasts. "Do I take it that you like me, then, girl?" he asks and pushes a finger straight inside of her cunny, feeling for the walls of it with deliberate brutality. "Answer me."

She suffocates a whimper, biting the inside of her cheek; as he hooks his finger, that whimper turns into a scream she can no longer hold back. Now, she loses her balance and falls over him on all fours; he but laughs and laps at her cunny, savouring its taste, not to pleasure her but to sate his own greed. "Delicious," he hisses, slapping her arse. "But you did not answer me, my child," he says and arranges her to straddle his lap, wiping her hair from her face. "Do you like me?"

"You are a beast," she spits, squirming when he grabs her by the arms; he has seated her straight over his prick, long and hard in his drawers, her cunny now soaking the fabric of them entirely. 

"So they say," he says and grins. "But that makes two of us; why, I have in my lap a veritable little bitch in heat!" 

"You swine!" Finally, she slaps him, so hard that his hair flies; yet, to her horror, he but moans in exaggerated delight, grabbing her hands when she tries to squirm away from him. It's as if she had just delivered him not a blow but a caress; he lets out a disgusting mockery of a love-croon and grinds himself against her cunny all the harder.

"Do not lie to me, girl; do not lie to _yourself_ about your own desire. You want me, and that's that. What better proof than this sweet little thing right here?" he but asks and glances down at her cunny. "It's been a while since a girl was this wet for me," he says, soft with a genuine tenderness; "this honeyed," the husband peeking through his glittering eyes. "Be honest with me, and I shall reward you most handsomely, pleasure you in ways I guarantee no woman has ever known. Why, I might even make you my head wife," he smirks and kisses her hand. 

She flushes at this, unable to keep up the pretense of the proud maiden. "What would you have me do, then, my lord and master?"

"You do want to please me, then?" he asks, taking her hand to his cheek, his eyes now warm from delight. 

She casts down her eyes, grinding herself a little over his prick. The ache in her cunny is unbearable, and she cannot help herself; she must have the friction. "Yes, my lord and master. Yes, I would."

"Well," he says and picks up her chin with his fingertips. "It would please me greatly if you undressed me, and in doing so, told me what you thought of each body part. What fantasies each part evokes in you, what dreams," he says, his voice even wavering, now, from tenderness. "So that I might bring you pleasure with it. As I said, I will reward your honesty: give me this and I shall treat you to the same appreciation in turn, love your body in the same manner."

"Like husband and wife?" she murmurs, having read of this ritual in love manuals as one to perform on the wedding night, a bride and groom getting to know each other in this manner.

"It'll ruin my reputation as a brute," he grins, his crooked teeth, beast's teeth flashing white as he nods at her, "but I feel as if you are _the_ woman for whom it will be worth it," he says. "Come, my child. I would have you undress me."

"But, my lord, I have not yet told you what I think of your face," she says playfully as she lies down beside him, her hand upon his chest, her fingers playing with the collar of his tunic.

He turns to lie on his side, facing her, leaning his head on his left arm. "Tell me," he says, and even if he is smiling, she can sense a little dread in his mind, lurking there at the very back of it: how many women must he have disgusted utterly with his teeth, frightened senseless with his devil's eyes? And now, her mind is filled with sorrow, pity as she realises how many of his women must have lied to him, afraid of losing their heads if they let him find out they found him repulsive; it stings her heart so terribly that tears now fill her eyes. 

Of course, he notices this, and without him even peeking into her mind, she is sure he can tell what she is thinking of: he must have seen this hesitation that now flits across her face upon the faces of so many slave girls. His smile fades a little and he stiffens, his amorous demeanour diminishing a little, now; yet, determined, he remains in position and keeps on looking at her, waiting for her. 

"Tell me, my lady. What do you see?" he asks, his voice now serious, tinged with a little bitterness, even if he knows that behind this mask of the slave girl hides the woman who has loved him for eleven years. Did she find him repulsive then, he now wonders? And why should he care if she had done so, he thinks? 

Now, these thoughts are so loud that Yassamin can hear them, so she puts her finger to his lips.

"I see a man who is half woman," she says, honest, true; "I see a man who is half human and half pard," she murmurs. For this is what she had thought of, those first few times she had looked upon his face: these had been the very first things she had noticed about him. "That you are not like other men. You speak and move as if a woman, but your body is driven and guided by the power of a man--no, not a mere man, but someone greater than that, a man possessed of the powers of men, djinn, angels and beasts. Someone possessed of the radiance of kings, a man born in the shadow of the Simurgh's wings, a man who was born to rule. Aye, my lord; I look upon these veins upon your temples and think: _within these veins flows the blood of emperors._ "

He but chuckles and kisses her fingertip. "Civil servants, actually; but don't tell anyone," he says, his face glowing, now, with relief. "But don't let me interrupt you. What else do you see?"

She traces his eyebrows, the soft wrinkles around his eyes. "I see the eyes of a great cat stalking in the dark, but more than that, a blue unlike any other. When I first looked into these eyes I felt myself falling, and thought: _how can you fall into a sky?_ Because that was what I felt. For they are as blue as the zenith, yet bluer still; perhaps the blue of Heaven itself. They are at once eyes wicked, demonic, yet within them I see reflected the realms of angels. Before I met you, I had heard tell that Jaffar of the Barmakids had the evil eye; that his eyes were made of that self-same fire God had fashioned djinn out of."

"What do _you_ think, then, my sweet?" he asks, his voice hoarse. "Are they demonic or angelic?"

"Both," she says, smiling. "Methinks this man is an angel who but plays the part of the demon, to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies, and a fever into the loins of his lovers."

He presses his forehead against hers and laughs a little. "I get the feeling I have bought myself a little diplomat. Anything else?"

She traces his moustache with her fingertip. "These make you look even more like a big cat! They widen the middle of your face the way big cats' noses slope and widen downwards; I've always wondered if that was deliberate. Frankly, I think these whiskers make you look utterly ridiculous, but then, you look even _more_ ridiculous without them."

"How would you know?" he frowns. "You have only just met me."

"I have a good imagination," she says and bites her lip.

And it is at that that he pounces her and tickles her, merciless, relentless; screaming, she falls onto the cushions, giggling and flailing.

"Help!" she cries.

He blows hair out of his face. "I think it's time we got on with the undressing," he growls and tosses away his tunic, then pins her down by the arms, settling to lie down between her legs. "Come. What do you see now?"

She shakes her head. "The long, lean muscles of a pard, still. The most wonderful of figures," she says, dragging upon his shalwars with her feet. "And here, the most beautiful of hips, a woman's. And I would feel them against mine," she says, looking into his eyes.

"Your wish is my command, my lady." Now, he, too, is out of breath; swiftly, he kicks away his shalwars so that he and Yassamin are finally rolling upon the bed naked, bare skin against bare skin. Moaning into her mouth, he kisses her deeply, passionately; just like the first time, she can taste mint and basil upon his breath. 

"You taste good," she slurs, her eyes glazed from happiness, dizzy from her first kiss--her first kiss! 

"It's because I still taste of your cunny, you naughty girl," he laughs onto her lips. "Is it how you expected your first kiss--your first kiss on the _mouth,_ that is--to be like?"

"I _had_ hoped for it to be passionate, yes," she says and strokes his arm. "You have fulfilled my dreams most admirably."

"I am glad," he says and hugs her tight. But then, almost abruptly, he lets go and lies back on the cushions, spreading his legs out for her, offering himself to her. "What do your eyes see now, my lady?"

She shivers; she had been told to expect pain, and both of them remember it this very moment, she measuring the considerable size of his prick and wondering how on earth she could ever fit it inside of her body. Even the memory of the grown Yassamin hovering within her consciousness does not help dissipate the little fear and wonder she always feels whenever she compares his hugeness to her smallness: no matter how gentle he is, she will never not think of those stories of women who had been slain by--

"Enough of that," Jaffar says, waving his hand, _blowing_ such terrible thoughts from her mind, banishing brutalities from her entirely, whipping them out of her as surely as he had whipped her anguish out of her stubborn flesh. "I swear to you, my lady, that all I ever want to bring you with this body is love and pleasure," he murmurs, taking her by the hand, then taking it to his prick. "Come. What do you see, feel?"

It is then that she notices he is wearing a silvern ring about the root of his genitals; she had noticed he was exceptionally hard, but had thought it but his excitement at the play. She traces the ring with her hand, Jaffar's eyes following her with awe as the virgin in her wonders about the ring, of its uses.

"It is to keep blood trapped in the prick," he says, brushing her fingers with his. "Most wonderful for enhancing pleasure, and excellent for older men; it prolongs erections, keeps us hard for longer periods of time. So, you see, it is not merely my own pleasure I am thinking of, my sweet; I want to make sure I will last long enough to bring you satisfaction as well. I have sworn to not let a woman out of my bed unfulfilled, you see."

She laughs a little nervously as she clasps his cock, attempting a gentle stroke. "I must confess I am, well, terrified. What if you will have chafed me raw before I reach release?"

He raises his eyebrow. "How would a virgin know of being chafed?" he asks playfully.

"I have had toys," she says, her tonguetip peeking past her teeth as she tries a firmer stroke. 

His prick leaps in her hand at that. "Therefore, you must know all about the importance of good lubrication," he leers and cups her head, pushing it towards his groin. "Lick."

She rolls her eyes. "It is a filthy act!"

"Correct!" he snaps. "Exactly the sort one would not ask from a noble wife, only a slave girl," he says and takes her by the hair, twisting his fingers in it until she cries out; his eyes narrow into thin slits as he drinks in her pain, his cock pulsing in her hand. "I said, _lick._ "

Again, he has plunged them into a darker mood, lashed her with his command, captured her with his cruelty; again, her cunny clenches painfully from arousal. They had become too playful, too friendly for master and slave, that much is true: he is but reminding her of her position, which should be right here, kneeling between his legs.

Yet she tarries, her mouth but an inch from his cock, delaying just to have him twist his fingers in her hair a little more: it is agonising, the pain raining down her back like broken glass, and on and on he keeps twisting until tears roll out of her eyes. She stares at him past his erection, stares until her eyes mist so that she can only see the blue of his eyes, him bending her mouth to his cock by the sheer power of his will.

With a helpless cry, she takes him into her mouth and sucks.

Immediately, he slaps her on the cheek, then the other. "Insolent trollop!" he says and yanks back her head. "Did I say 'suck?'" he says and shakes her by the hair. "Hmm?"

"I am sorry, master," she says and swallows, all of her skin cold and rippling with gooseflesh, her nipples pointing out hard and dark. 

"Cross your wrists behind your back. I do not wish for you to use your hands either. Only your tongue. Do you understand?" he says, shaking her once more for good measure until tears splash out of her eyes onto his thighs. 

She draws in a deep, trembling breath and does as she is told, obeying his hand and his eyes as he brings her face to his cock once more. "Yes, master," she says, sniffling back tears.

He spreads his legs wide, cupping his balls in his hand, stroking his perineum, brushing his anus with his fingertips. "These, too, my child," he says. 

She squeezes her eyes shut, pretending horror, but also shivers all over as the older Yassamin recalls the memory of his taste down there: she opens her eyes and the pinkness of his perineum, the pinkness of his arse--so reminiscent of the colour of a woman's sex--make saliva flood into her mouth.

And he has heard her thoughts, having plucked them from her mind, savouring them like sweetmeats: he hisses as he rubs his anus with his fingertips, now, dragging his fingers up his perineum. "They're all yours, my sweet. Now, lick."

And never did she know she would enjoy shame like this, the virgin in her shocked by the smell and taste of a man's genitals, the harlot in her intoxicated by them as she sucks them off his skin; she sobs and moans at the same time as the sinner in her urges her on. For the first time, the maiden in her charts that combination of salt and metal that is the taste of human flesh, the musk of a man, the pungent glands of a man; grateful that Jaffar has shaven himself entire, she laves his skin with her tongue all over, sucking it here and there, drinking his taste from his very pores. 

And oh, his face, his face! His lashes flutter like sharp, black blades across his cheeks, his mouth as red as his genitals, gleaming like his sack as she now lets it slip off her tongue; as his balls smack against the skin of his perineum, his mouth snaps open, saliva dangling between his teeth and his lower lip. A hoarse cry splits that string of saliva in two, the fabric of the mattress creaking as he drags his nails across it, clawing at it as his hips lift off the bed, seeking her mouth; she makes sure to cover his cock, his balls, his perineum entirely with her saliva until he is gleaming all over, glazed from her love. 

Yet she does not lick his arse yet, even the virgin in her knowing that this is supposed to be the most sensitive area of the male body, and therefore worth saving for last. From time to time, she glances at it as she pulls back for breath; now, drops of her spittle have started to trickle down to it, but she catches them at the last minute, licking them up with her tongue. 

His fingers spasm in her hair; he lets out a groan and lifts his head, bleary. "Yassamin..." he moans. "Yassamin. Please."

"Yes, master?" she says and licks her lips, wicked, triumphant.

"Demoness," he groans and lets his head fall back once more. "I swear..." he shakes his head and twists his hand in her hair, "I am going to make you do everything I did not dare ask of you on our wedding night, you little tart," he hisses, lifting his head once more, pressing her face against his cock, rutting into her cheek. "Do you hear me?" he says, half-laughing, now frantic as he grinds himself against her. "I never knew, never knew, never knew," he meaows as he guides his cock into her mouth, "Suck it--I never knew you would like this so much, never knew where your _dirty little tongue_ liked to play, God, Yassamin!" he moans, now taking her mouth roughly, without finesse. "Suck it, suck, suck!" 

She does, she does: she takes him with her mouth until she is choking, rolling her head from side to side with the clumsiness of that first time she had taken him into her mouth, bathing in his adoring cries at this. He lets go of her head and lifts his legs with his hands--every time he does this, she is reminded of how it is exactly what a woman does when she wants to be taken, and she tells him this, too, begging for him to forgive her for sending to him this thought, seeing as her mouth is otherwise occupied. Oh, but she adores this, this most unusual of positions for a man, the way he looks as he lies there, the most beautiful of women, the most beautiful of men. 

_I remember being so shocked the first time you did that, but... it felt so natural,_ she thinks at him. _So natural--for you. Like nothing in the world had ever made as much sense. Please, do not ever shy away from doing this, my lord, ever; never ever be embarrassed of that which is to me the most beautiful thing in the world,_ she sends to him her thoughts, this her earnest prayer. 

He but ruffles her hair. "I shan't," he murmurs, tears in his eyes. "Never did I think I would find a woman who would understand this quality in me as you did--better than I understood it myself, then. Remember, I had not let anyone visit this place in decades until you insisted on invading it, my little warrior," he says. "It is only ever still your secret orchard, your playground."

She pulls back for breath, nuzzling his sack. "I love you."

And that is all; nothing else needs to be said. Jaffar but lets out a little broken laugh and leans back, shaking his head in disbelief at his luck; as she kisses her way down his perineum and begins to kiss his arse, his entire body shudders and he cries out in delight. But now, there are no words, only noises: his disbelieving gasps, every time she performs this act such an unimaginable a pleasure to him that he is always taken by surprise by it, but never more so than now, when he has again lived for thirty years without having had anyone play there. Thirty years, he has barred access to the door of his greatest ecstasy from all men and women, has denied he had ever felt pleasure there; she can sense his self-hate roiling off him, now, too, that he should have wasted so many years of his life without giving into this, the greatest joy his body knows.

But with her tongue, she reminds him of how he has not been a fool, not at all: she does not blame him for having been cautious, for it is an act that requires the utmost trust, and he had not been able to trust anyone until he had met Yassamin. Only love can truly open this gate for pleasure--everything else is but a brutal invasion, filled with pain. And it is with her love that she opens him, spreading him gently with her fingertips, dipping her tongue into each one of his folds, licking up his taste from the pulsing bud; a shiver goes through her each time she tastes a deeper must, each time his muscles unfurl even further, letting her tonguetip in deeper. Soon, her jaw aches, her tongue aches, but she is determined to continue; a mad hunger drives her to taste each and every dip of his arse lest she has missed a touch of salt here, a daub of musk here. She takes him with not only her tongue but her voice, too, moaning her pleasure deep inside of his guts; in her hand, his prick pulses most exquisitely with sap at each one of her moans, she milking his pleasure out of him, caressing his very prostate with the vibrations of her voice. 

"Stop," he rasps, gathering her to himself, dragging her on top of his body. "You're so wonderful, my sweet, so precious to me, so precious," he sobs, curling up around her, "so precious," he breathes into her hair. 

By now, she is too tired to resist, her jaw hurting so much she cannot even speak. She but lets herself be held, cradled, rocked; but lets herself be tasted, Jaffar sucking the flavour of his own arse off her lips and her tongue. And each kiss of his speaks the language of his marvelling at her: her audacity, her perversion, he still finding it hard to believe she is real. "You must be a pairi, you must," he speaks in a voice that is the voice of a man half-asleep, thinking he is still dreaming; "a demoness from Babylon, I've always said... a houri from Paradise? Wherever you have come from, my sweet Yassamin, promise me you will never leave me. Promise me you will never fade with the dawn's light, my sweet night-blooming jessamine; promise to me you will be beside me always."

She laces her fingers with his. "Always and forever," she says, hugging him tight; "Know that I could not bear to live without you."

It is then that he laughs, like a little boy who has just figured out something. 

"What is it?" she asks.

"You know the Christians marry for life," he says. "We should have converted, to make our vows eternal."

"God forbid!" Yassamin exclaims, muttering the creed under her breath. "Next you will suggest we should do as the Indians do, and that I should jump upon your funeral pyre," she shudders. "While I understand the sentiment--oh, Jaffar, let us not talk of death now," she pulls back and gazes into his eyes, her own eyes flickering from emotion. "Besides, you have not even deflowered me yet," she smiles. 

"How inconsiderate of me," he drawls. "But a moment."

And right there, while they are still lying face to face on their sides, he guides himself inside of her. There is no pain, there is no discomfort: she is so wet and so relaxed and so happy that he enters her with ease. 

Yet it is a marvel for her to feel this: she closes her eyes as she feels him move inside of her body, feels what it is like to have a man inside of her for the first time. The head of his prick, the width of it as it passes the muscles of her entrance, glides past the hardness of her pubic bone, finding that blissful spot beyond it; she gasps as he slips there, nestling inside of her perfectly. 

"That was easy," she slurs, drunk from her pleasure, her cunny squeezing around him so eagerly it makes him hiss in delight. 

"I am told that happens when two people love each other very much," he says and nuzzles her nose. "I remember being so proud that first night... when you hardly bled at all. That I had made you so soft," he says and takes his hand to her clitoris, adoring the way his caressing of it makes her squeeze around him once more. "Just as I told you: that I would make you so soft and so ready that I could just _slip_ inside of you, just like that, just like that," he chants against her lips, now punctuating his words with rhythmical thrusts, "just like that."

She pants against his face, open mouth against his open mouth; she shivers all over as Jaffar rocks into her, as she wraps her leg around his waist. "I--I confess I found it strange," she stutters. "I was almost disappointed that you made me ride you," she confesses.

"Oh?" he sounds a little hurt, but never stops moving inside of her, never stops stroking her. 

"I--" she moans as he slides in extremely deep, now, nudging the root of her womb uncomfortably. "I had always expected to be deflowered lying down, you see," she says.

"That can be arranged," he says and turns her over, gathering her legs around his waist, kissing her nose. "Is this better, my lady?" he asks, his eyes crossed from happiness.

But it is then that he slides so deep he is past the root of her womb and enters the very back of her sex, touching that most magical place in her body for the first time: she howls and shudders in his arms, the pleasure of it so overwhelming--even nauseating--that she cannot speak.

"I shall take that as a yes!" Jaffar laughs and begins to move into her, truly taking her with a proper rhythm, now, more passionate than artful. 

"It is--" she gasps and takes her hand to her cunny, "exactly--oh--this, oh, this--oh, God, oh, God, oh God. Don't stop, Jaffar, don't stop!"

"I don't think I can," he moans, now unable to hold back himself. He has been waiting for so long that now, her tightness is driving him mad, just as mad as she is from the pleasure of finally being joined with him. "Moan for me, girl, moan for me, tell me what you want--oh--!"

He does not have to tell her twice. She knows it is filth he wants, he so adoring the idea of corrupting a virgin: and a noblewoman never uses filthy words, does she? Therefore, it is exactly because of this that she now turns the air blue with her swearing. "Take me, take me, _fuck_ me!" she cries, using that last word to whip him on, and it is indeed like a kick of sharp spurs to his flanks: he thrusts into her with such violence for it that she rains filth down upon him, now. "Fuck me, fuck me, fuck me, you beast, oh, God--you are killing me, you are killing me--Jaffar-- _fuck_ me!"

His laughter is that of a maniac as he bathes in her vulgarity, kissing her wildly as he thrusts into her: "Come with me, Yassamin, come with me," he urges her, lifting her hips to find the angle from which to take her just right, unable to bear the idea of them not coming together. "Rub yourself, come, rub yourself--"

"You do it," she throws the challenge into his eyes, even if she is still rubbing at herself; now, more than ever, she wants to be undone by his magic, wants to feel the thrill of it for the first time. "Take me, Jaffar, take me," she gasps and means it-- _take my body, take my soul, take them with you, as only you know how, as only you know how,_ she swirls into his mind, now screaming from the power of his thrusts. _You know what I mean, my love, you know what I mean--take me, take me with you, take me with you to the sun and the moon and the stars--_

Yet even as he comes, she is not ready, could never be ready, never, ever will be ready: he washes over her a tidal wave, crashing into her every muscle, the very bed juddering with his thrusts. And now, she feels what he had felt that first time: his utter disbelief, his amazement, his holy awe at this happening, at him having found his true love at last. That he has indeed attained the unattainable, that he has won the love of his princess, but more than that: that she should be the most perfect of companions for him, the woman whose existence he did not even think possible, the other half of his soul. All this he now pours through her a prayer, a song of praise, his every hoarse cry vibrating through her body as he beats his love into her body with his hips; he did not know it was possible for him to be this _happy,_ this much in love, this joyous.

And she is there to catch him: oh, the moment her convulsions start, she wraps him in them, clothes him in them, throws them about him a gold and red cloak; as her womb pulls at him, so does she pull at him with her arms, with her care, with her love, rippling around him as waves of heat and light. She takes his love and shelters it, shelters him as if a babe in her womb; a Simurgh's wings, she encloses him within the myriad colours of her love. Each one of her pleasure-ripples she lets wash over him, too, dancing, drumming, trembling each one of them out onto his skin with her cunny's walls, her fingertips, the soles of her feet upon his back; each last wave of them does she cry out into his ear, into his shoulder, into the musk-black night of his hair. Her Jaffar, her Jaffar, her everything; each night does she vow to wed herself to him thus, if not in their bodies' joining, then in her dreams: her Jaffar, her Jaffar, the djinni of her pool, the embodiment of all her dreams come true.

He falls atop her groaning, resting his entire weight upon her the way he knows she likes him to. _Is it that I am poorer in imagination, for I never thought a woman such as yourself possible? You just said I was your dreams come true, but I could not even dream up a woman as wonderful as you._

 _I did not mean it that way, my silly old fool,_ Yassamin tells him. _My dreams were poor, too, in comparison to the man who lies here in my arms, the man whom I have shared my life with,_ she thinks and hugs him tight. _I, too, would not believe you existed, were you not flesh and blood right here, inside of me this very moment,_ she sighs in utter happiness and delight. "My wonderful, wonderful husband, the love of my life."

He swallows back tears, lacing his fingers with hers. "My wonderful, wonderful wife, the love of my life," he whispers into her hair and squeezes her fingers tight, "in this life and in Paradise."

"Amen," she whispers and hugs his hands, his waist, his sex with her entire body, embracing him with her entire self; "Amen, amen, amen."


	3. Chapter 3

The night is yet young, and thanks to the relaxation brought on by their first joining, Jaffar and Yassamin can fall ever deeper into their roles of the newly-made king and the slave-become-queen. To think that all they had left behind, the lofty positions most people dream of, are now to them but a play, a game to enrich the far greater kingdom they have gained in their blessed exile! Oh, but both of them find the absurdity of this hilarious, dizzying. The bewilderment, the excitement, the gratitude they feel at their journey having brought them here dyes their mood with colours both playful and solemn: spiritual in the reverence they feel and show to each other's bodies as they learn them anew for the first time, the pleasure and the thrill in their realisation rendering them as free and as gay as children.

"God is great," Jaffar sighs as he rests between her legs, kissing her cunny with great tenderness. 

It is then that Yassamin feels a hot flash inside of her sex, waves of dry heat both inside and outside of it, all over her cunny and her very womb: the virgin in her is terrified, even as the older Yassamin recognises this for but the familiar cleansing spell they have used many a time. Even then, they have mostly used it for cleansing the rectum; the vaginal walls are too sensitive for such a rigorous cleanse, and now, she is completely dry on the inside, too dry, and it hurts.

"What are you doing?" she cries. He has no reason to protect her from pregnancy, for she had performed a womb-sealing spell before coming here; contraception is something they would never forget, no matter how intense their trances during love-play.

"It is a most marvellous trick for keeping a woman's belly from swelling," he says, matter-of-fact, dropping a soft kiss upon her mound. "But that is not why I performed it. I find that sperm ruins the taste somewhat, you see, and it's you I would rather taste; you and you alone."

"It burns," she says and squirms.

"But it is fading now, is it not?"

"It is," she murmurs; his mouth is quickly making her forget about any such discomfort.

"Mm. Good. Now I can just focus on..." he says and licks up one of her folds, then the other, "this little thing... entirely," and he gives a teasing suck to her clitoris, sucking on and on until the sensation becomes too much for her to bear and she jerks her hips away from his mouth with a wail. "You taste so good, too," he groans as he pins her hips down into the bed, his voice dragging in his throat, his nostrils fluttering with emotion. "Some women never do, you know, no matter how well they shave and wash, no matter what they eat. Never have I tasted a woman as sweet as you, and this is no lie."

She blinks. The maiden Yassamin had thought him submitting himself to this humiliating, filthy act was but some exception he'd made, a concession to his great lust for her; that he so wanted to possess her that he wanted to taste her everywhere, even the dirtiest parts of her body. This Yassamin does not yet know the taste of other women's cunnies, of how different each woman can taste--from the sweetest of light, sugared nectars to the thickest, sourest of white secretions. She knows only how much her own fluids can change from bitter to sweet during different parts of her cycle, and thanks Providence for having been taken to his bed during one of her sweeter days. 

Yet still, she is astounded. "You always do this with your women, then?"

"Mm-hmm. I told you. I have sworn not to let a woman leave my bed unsatisfied. Few women can reach release from but ordinary coitus; therefore, I make sure to give them mouth beforehand, and at times, after."

"But you don't like the taste?"

"I _love_ it," he purrs, smacking his lips. "Thankfully, the aforementioned bitter woman is an exception. And bringing it out... " he groans in delight. "There are few things in the world that can make a man feel as accomplished--particularly as I hear it's difficult for women to wet sometimes even for masturbation, even if the desire is there. Just as a man may want his wife, but for some reason or another, his prick does not follow suit."

"How do you know all this?!" Yassamin blurts. She has read about male impotence in all the love manuals, of all the complex procedures, devices and medicines invented to treat it, but few sources ever discussed the female experience. Yet, it is obvious how he has come by this knowledge, is it not? "I am sorry," she immediately mumbles, knowing full well a man of his wealth can afford the full four wives and as many slave girls as there are days in the year.

"Do not apologise, my child," he says and lies down on top of her, gifting her with her own taste--and he is right: she does taste sweet. She has rarely tasted herself; only in the most fevered and filthy of her fantasies, only spurred on by Jaffar himself has she ever dared lift a trembling hand to her lips, to lick off a little of her own arousal. "Do not apologise for being bewildered by something this rare: I am well aware that this is, for most men, an outright perversion. In fact, I find that the more women a man has, the less effort he puts into pleasing them. Whereas the man who can afford but the one wife has plenty of incentive to not only make sex a pleasurable act for her, but to keep her coming back for more!"

And now, as she but keeps on staring at him, he bursts into laughter. "You look as if you have never seen anything as absurd."

She searches his eyes. "I suppose... I suppose I am lucky," she says, letting out a little, disbelieving laugh. "You have to forgive me, my lord: it is quite bewildering for a woman to find she has become a king's concubine, and on top of that, to discover the man is a sorcerer as well. And on top of _that,_ to find out that he is..."

He raises his eyebrow. "A pervert?" he chuckles. "A deviant? Before you apologise for thinking you have implied such, I take those titles as but compliments."

"I'm so--" she bites her lips and smiles, shaking her head. "It's only that you are the most extraordinary of men."

He stretches on top of her, groaning happily. "I have, at times, dreamt of being a commoner, you know. Perhaps a merchant, or an ordinary engineer. Having but the one wife and settling down with her in a nice house somewhere quiet, raising a family together with her," he says and caresses her cheek, his eyes twinkling with happiness. "To be free of the burden of kingship, dedicating my life to scholarship, the building of automatons, and a life pious. The life of a Caliph, even if he is supposed to be the head of all Islam, leaves little time for contemplation and spiritual growth, I find."

"God provides for those who have faith," the older Yassamin sighs in joy through her entire body; with great care, she undoes Jaffar's unravelled ponytail and ties it again, an act of tenderness she has performed hundreds of times, now, and would perform a hundred thousand times more. "Do you think you will ever do that?" she whispers playfully. "Take that step into the dark, and dare live out that dream?"

"Ooh, I don't know," he smirks playfully and kisses his way down her body. "Perhaps," he murmurs and kisses the long Caesarean scar upon her belly tenderly, reverently. Again, he makes his way between her legs, kissing her cunny once more. "For a woman who even tastes of Paradise--" his breath catches in his throat, he nuzzling her sex with his nose, his cheeks, dropping kiss after worshipful kiss upon the plushness of her mound and its lips; "I just might, my lady," he whispers hoarsely, agitated from his passion; "I just might."

Then there are no more words as he begins to truly kiss her sex: just as she had adored him with her mouth, so he now adores her with his. His eyes, too, he uses to now measure her, to devour her, the caress of his gaze as powerful as that of his tongue as it travels over her swelling, heating flesh: as he frames her cunny with his hands and but _stares_ at it, she shivers so much her feet slip upon the sheets. With his hands, he squeezes the lips of her cunny together, as if an artisan crafting a masterpiece of the erotic; with his thumbs, he pinches both halves shut over the mouth of her vagina and massages her there, knowing intimately how much the muscles at a woman's entrance in particular enjoy the sensation of being pressed and rubbed. Yassamin tries with all her might to forget that he knows all this so well because he has now been a woman himself: this is something he would have done to a mistress even before his knowledge of female anatomy had become that personal, she is sure of it.

"Correct," he says, never taking his eyes off her cunny; he lets out a little cry of delight as his thumbs begin to slip with her sap, she swelling between his squeezing, massaging hands. "These muscles on the entrance correspond to the erectile tissue that forms most of the male penis," he murmurs almost absent-mindedly. "Therefore, it is only fitting that they enjoy a stroking movement the most." 

Before she can scold him for the medical lecture, he takes up her right leg. "Turn around. I want to see it like this, you see," he says and turns her to lie on her side, her cunny pushed out; "that's it, with the lips closed--" he hisses. "Oh, my God." With his now-wet hand, he slickens his own cock, keening through his nose--Yassamin realises he has not touched himself for long moments, and thanks to the silver ring, his cock is again so hard it is a dark and angry red, almost purple. "Are you aching, my sweet?" he asks, rasps. 

"Yes," she says, bunching her fists: now, she deliberately squeezes the muscles of her cunny to alleviate the ache, so violently he must be able to see it from the outside of her cunny. The delight he derives from looking at her like this--it is some primal, animal thing, the way a beast would see a female in heat. "Please, master. I would have you inside me."

"I would be inside of you, too, my sweet," he says, his voice strained as he squeezes his prick, now leaning close to her cunny once more. "But not yet, not yet," he says, laving her slit from side to side, curling his tongue a little over her anus, too; this sends Yassamin's cunny pulsing once more, she now the one keening through her nose at how packed with blood her sex is, how desperate for friction. 

"Does it not hurt?" she asks, glancing at his ring.

"Aye, a little," he says. "But it's fine," he says, laughing as his hand is now doubly wet, his prick dripping at the sight of her, his cock glistening deliciously. "It feels wonderful, too."

"You are as wet as a woman," Yassamin says, remembering how she had marvelled at this sight the first time she had witnessed it. The manuals had never told her of this, either: she had only heard men exuded but a little wetness before the ejaculate proper. But now, as Jaffar pumps his prick in his fist, he outright _dribbles_ over his fingers, in a manner that shocks her even now. 

He but holds his hand out for her to taste; she never takes her eyes from his as she licks up the taste from his palm, shivering at her own daring. "You taste so sweet, too," she says, shaking her head, pressing her cheek into his sticky palm. "It's amazing."

"Some women thought it a venereal disease and refused to lie with me!" he says.

"I wondered about that for a brief moment," she says, squeezing her legs tighter together as she releases his hand so that he can stroke himself once more, her cunny pulsing so violently she can feel it in her womb as he begins to nuzzle her cunny again. "But then I thought: this man is half woman, so it makes sense that he would be as wet as a woman, too."

"And that's the reason others rejected me, too," he says, but there is no bitterness to his voice, now. He drags wetness from her cunny with his thumb and begins to press at her anus with it, making her breathing quicken, setting her heart galloping. "They thought me an exclusive sodomite at heart, for they had only ever known of eunuchs dripping so as they were taken from behind." He dips the tip of his thumb into her arse, not deep enough to hook yet, but enough to send her clenching once more, laughing as he can play her entire body as easily as this, with but his thumb-tip. " _'A prick up the arse is what you need, you filthy buggerer!'_ they said. And did not believe me when I said I loved the cunny even more." 

But Yassamin is no longer listening; now, whatever Jaffar may think, she needs to touch herself, and she takes her hand to her clitoris. "God. Jaffar--"

He raises his eyebrow. " _'Master,'_ I thought."

"Master," she groans. "If you don't take me now, I think I shall die," she moans and buries her face into the pillow. She cannot even rut herself into her hand in this position, and promptly turns around on all fours, better able to stroke her cunny this way. "Please," she says, offering herself like the bitch in heat he has made of her, hoping that the sight will so blind him with lust that he will cease his teasing. "Do not torment me so."

"Oh-ho, and who's the one doing the tormenting here, now?" he says. "But this is excellent: I was, in fact, about to ask of you something we did that first week, just as you asked me for _this,_ my little she-sodomite," he says and now plunges his slickened thumb deep into her arse, making her wail and spasm. "Would you listen, my sweet? Would you _please_ me, my slave?"

"Anything," she groans and grinds her face into the pillows. "If you but take me; oh, please, take me. Take me." 

But it is at that that he takes his thumb out. Furious, she turns to look at him over her shoulder, and for the first time, the virgin in her sees him indulging in that perversion she had not been introduced to until a year into their marriage: Jaffar, his eyes closed in ecstasy, sucking the taste of her arse from his thumb. Indeed, he is shivering, as if it were the first time for him, too; as if this were a risk he were taking, an act dirty enough to drive her from his bed, slave or not. He moans helplessly around his thumb as if it were a little prick, fellating his mouth with it as if the perversion itself were his master and he its catamite. He smears his thumb over his tongue, sucks it with his cheeks hollowed, his prick dripping in rivulets over his pumping fist; he snorts, sobs through his nose as he is so defiled by his own lust, his cock pulsing so, his hips thrusting so it's as if he were being taken by a man this very moment.

And it is at that that Yassamin, God save her sinful heart, unravels onto her own hand: the novelty of the sight is indeed strong enough to push her into violent, unexpected release. Howling, she falls onto her hands, rutting into them with the entire weight of her body behind her hips, beating her joined hands with her cunny; her clitoris is enormous, hard as it rolls back and forth in its hood and between her folds, hard and hot against the ball of her thumb. Each roll of her hips is an electric shock through her clitoris, through her hips, through the front of her body, radiating into her spine; her fingertips slip in her wetness as she sobs hopelessly into the pillows, her face burning from the scratch of the embroideries.

She is about to turn around when he pins her down and enters her, his cock in her cunny to the root in but two and a half thrusts, blowing the air out of her lungs. 

"Jaffar!"

His answer is but a groan, a series of thrusts so hard his hips slap against her buttocks, sending her entire body jiggling upon the bed; he fucks her with a great fury, the bed creaking with his blows. "This is your own fault!" he cries, grunting as he lowers himself on top of her entire, trembling all over as he forces himself to slow down. He clutches at her shoulders, his hips still jerking, he so deep inside of her it's nauseating: the tip of his cock finds the back of her womb, pushing up her innards so that for a brief, delirious moment she thinks he will soon have gutted her upon his prick. 

"It's your fault, your fault, your fault," he moans into her ear, forcing even his hips to still, now, forcing himself to drag up a deep, rasping breath. "I was going to ask for you to--" he gasps, "going to ask if I could watch you masturbate," he says. "I had meant to wait," he meaows. "But then you had to push this little _thing_ up in the air like the little bitch you are," he says and thrusts into her so hard he makes her howl, "push up this little arse of yours, this little cunny of yours, when you saw I would taste even your sh--"

But it is now that she cries out and pushes back at him, pushes so violently that he gathers her up with himself and takes the hint, moving them into a kneeling position. "Talk less and take me instead," she hisses through clenched teeth.

"Some talk for a slave," he says and takes her by the hair, shaking her head by it, yelping as that only makes her cunny squeeze around his prick. "That's it. " _Milk_ me, girl, milk me," he growls, "and I might just fuck you in that dirty little arse of yours; oh, I _might,_ I just _might._ "

"Please, please, please," she howls at him, beating her arse against his hips, she now so wet she is smearing his hips, his thighs, each slap of his hips on her arse ringing loudly in the room. He has barely entered her, yet already she is so heated inside that each one of his strokes is like a little orgasm, tongues of fire whipping through her entire body each time the head of his cock hits her womb. He is made for her, made for her, made for her; so perfectly does he fit inside of her, filling her so completely whenever he stills and holds her cruelly against his body, leaving her cunny helplessly clenching and clenching around his cock, desperate for friction. Her left hand is hurting from her resting her weight on it, her right hand hurting even more from her stroking of herself, her clitoris now so swollen it's as thick as her little finger. 

And he must have heard her, felt her: it is at that that he yanks back her hands and crosses them at the wrist; deliberately, he now chooses to remain completely still. "Take me," he grunts back at her, then turns this command into a mockery of her plea, cooing at her like a slave girl: "Take me, take me," he lisps at her like the sodomite she knows him to be. 

Bellowing low and deep in her chest, she shouts her frustration into the pillows and arches her back. Oh, she will show him; she will earn her queendom if not with her skill, then with her passion, her determination: she focuses all of her lust, her want, her need and now uses them to take him. All of her but cunny, arse and thigh, all of her but heated, red and slick and slippery flesh, she throws herself onto his prick, impaling herself upon it like a martyr gladly going to her death: her back undulating, she turns all of herself into but a channel of flesh, but love devouring him entire.

He remains completely still, there, balancing on his knees: yet even he has to hold onto her hair, her waist so as not to fall over from the power of her thrusts, little hiccoughing noises of surprise escaping from his throat as she takes him like the she-demon she is. 

"Yassamin, Yassamin," and it is the first time he has used her name during this bout: he staggers and falls upon her again, throwing her into the bed. 

But he is not doing this only to pleasure himself, she realises, but also to reward her: so well has he calculated the length of his thrusts, now, so well does he arrange himself behind her and over her in just the right position. He is listening for her, leaving pauses between his blows for her ripples to flow, both her younger self and her older self marvelling at this; even as the orgasm that now takes over her is another fast and hard and fiery one, a release of great pressure rather than an entwining of souls. 

Again, she grinds onto her hands, her cunny so hot and aching so much that she thinks she will die if she cannot have one more thrust--there--one more ripple--her muscles clenching so violently around his prick that she is afraid she is hurting him with the force of her orgasm. So violent are the spasms this time that she tosses his entire body up with them, her cunny making slurping noises around his cock as she moans out the last throes of her release.

And at the back of her mind, she can hear Jaffar--the concerned engineer!--thinking so loudly that she can spy terms like "overheating," making sure to strangle him for this later. But can he help it? No, he cannot, she knows this, this being how his ridiculous brain works; and she loves him for it, and would have no one else, no one else.

But has she harmed him, made him sprain something? That is how shocked she is at the force with which she has now taken him, the older Yassamin alarmed at her fury, too. Oh, she would ask him, but she is too exhausted to do so. She pulls out her hands, for they are cramping; her legs are just about to cramp, too, but she is too out of breath to even speak, to even tell him to pull off her. She but thinks it, and hopes he can hear it.

And indeed, he can. With a soft meaow, he falls off her to lie beside her, his wet prick slapping against his belly; he lies there, heaving, sweat beading upon his chest and his forehead, his veins thick and full upon his temples. 

_Are you all right?_ she asks him with her mind.

 _Died and gone to Paradise, but hopefully I will be back--shortly--!_ and now even his thought snaps from exhaustion, he letting out a shuddering breath, sinking into the mattress entire. 

It is quiet for long moments before they move again, speak again, even think again: now, despite what Jaffar may think of it, Yassamin removes the ring from around his genitals, having to do so with a spell, he still so engorged it's impossible for her to just slip it off him. "I am sorry," she says and kisses his prick. "But I would not have you damage yourself."

"I suppose it's fair enough," he says. "But look at him! He's hardly softened at all. That's what a week of abstinence does to you. I spent so much time on Mohammad's pipes that I was sick of the sight of even my _own_ plumbing by the time I got back home."

"Then I must help you soften him once more," she says and straddles him, taking him inside of herself. Now, she is so wet and so well-loved that such an act doesn't hurt her at all, the way it might otherwise. "How about this?" she says and sways upon him gently.

He looks up at her with mock-trepidation. "I should never have asked you to milk me. You almost sprained him, you realise! Gentler this time, please."

She chuckles onto his mouth. "Listen to us. When did a bridegroom, or, indeed, a slavemaster ever ask such a thing of his woman? 'Please, be gentle?'"

"Now," he says and kisses her hand. "Particularly as it's something tighter I was after, actually," he says and slips his hand to her arse, she now so wet there that he can easily dip two fingertips inside. When she yelps at the sudden invasion, his wicked grin finally returns. "That's more like it. Finally a grimace."

"You like seeing me in pain, my lord?" she asks him, tossing her hair back over her shoulder as she leans over him, kissing him upon the mouth. His fingers feel wonderful inside of her, rather; again, her body awakens, his caress like bellows to her sparks, she glowing once more. 

"Sometimes," he says breezily, hissing as her cunny squeezes around his cock, he continuing to hook his fingers inside of her arse, he now the one deciding the rhythm of his prick's milking. "But this act is not painful to you, that much I know," he leers. "The first time I saw you playing with yourself, just like this," he says, his cock leaping inside of her, his mouth wet, his tongue sticky, "with two of your little fingers inside your arse, your little cunny slick and swollen... _God,_ " he groans, thrusting up into her. "I remember thinking--'this is the woman I am going to marry.'"

She shivers around him, taking his mouth with a moan; she means to hug him but he steals her tongue from her, sucking upon it violently, biting it as he hooks his fingers brutally in her arse. She screams into his mouth, more from pleasure than pain; adoring the wicked beast stepping out once more, playing her so wonderfully, perfectly. "Jaffar..."

But he takes his fingers out of her arse and holds them to his mouth--but at the last moment, he holds them up to hers instead. "Show me. And I might reward you with something bigger in there."

She shudders, even if the gleaming film upon his fingers is completely clear; she shivers so violently she can feel him stiffening from the force with which she now clenches around his cock. She stares at his fingers, stares as he parts them, a string of her sap and mucus dangling between them: with a desperate howl, she takes his fingers into her mouth. 

And he takes her with them in turn: never taking his eyes from her, commanding her into utter stillness, he smears his fingers upon her tongue, making her taste all of it; "Suck, my little harlot, _suck,_ " he murmurs, "and perhaps in a little while, I'll let you taste my _cock_ from your arse," he purrs. "How would you like that? Hmm?" he lisps, mocks as he taps her tongue with his fingers, now pushing them deeper into her throat, making her gag; "How would you like that, my dirty little girl, how about that, hmm? Hmm?"

She pulls back with a groan, strings of her spittle hanging between her mouth and his hand; she butts into his sticky hand a cat, shuddering around him, her cunny pulling at his prick as if she would swallow all of Jaffar into her body whole. "Take my arse," she croaks, blinking tears of suffocation from her eyes, coughing a little as she sways there, her nipples as hard as little rocks; "please."

The chuckle in his throat is deep and dark; his pupils so wide they engulf his irises entire, his eyes swallowing her the night. 

"Lie back and spread your legs, my child."

As he moves over her, his shadow consumes her, casting a heat of its own over her skin: she reels at the gravity of his expression, at the dark glaze of his eyes. She feels very young, younger than young as he pins her wrists into the mattress, gasping as she realises he has locked her into position: he does the same with her legs as he spreads them and bends them to her sides, so that she is in the birth-giving position of a heathen fertility goddess. The virgin in her is terrified, but more terrified is the grown woman, now having been given no possibility to stroke her clitoris as Jaffar takes her arse: sodomy has been nigh impossible for her without it. 

"I want you to go further back, my child," he says and moves his hand over her face, closing her eyes: "to that first time you felt pleasure here," he says and brushes his other hand's fingertips across her anus. "What do you remember?"

"The summer's heat," she murmurs, her ears perking as she can hear a jar being opened, her nostrils flaring at a familiar scent: malva. That he should have chosen the same ointment he had used that first time in their tent--oh, but this makes her swoon from his tenderness, she now understanding he had meant to take her like this from the beginning, but that he would bring in such a detail to reassure her of his love and care for her. 

Yet, now, as she remembers that summer evening in her pavilion, all her maidens banished from it, she remembers this pavilion had been surrounded by flowering mallows, too. Had they always been there, she thinks? Or is she now imagining them there thanks to the scent, that which he is now smearing onto her cunny, her arse? 

"I remember the mallows in your garden, too," he whispers, his voice still wicked, but warm: "Cream of malva is something sodomites have always used for this purpose, and I remember laughing at the coincidence. Perhaps it was meant to be; you know how God has created a medicinal plant for each part of the body. It may be blasphemous of me, but I would not be surprised if the scent of mallow did, in fact, stimulate these particular nerves down here, and awaken in one the desire to be sodomised."

"That must have been it," she laughs. "I had just been masturbating..." she murmurs, and while she knows Jaffar has seen all of this, hearing her say these things out loud is a greater aphrodisiac to him than the malva ever could be. "But that had not been enough," she says and flexes her arms and legs, testing the strength of Jaffar's bonds. "They'd given me an enema earlier that day, too, for a stomach upset, and my arse felt sore. When I had put my fingers inside of my cunny, it had felt amazing because my arse had been so sensitised, the back wall of my cunny afire--I remember coming many times, explosively, yet still it was not enough. And I thought--well. I am as clean as one can be, so where's the harm? Sodomites enjoy it, so I might as well find out what it's all about."

He chuckles and passes his hand over her face once more. "Open your eyes." 

She does, and in his hand, he is holding a new kind of toy: it's not unlike the silver wand they have used before, with three small tulip-shaped bulbs one on top of another, atop a shaft as thick as a man's finger. Yet this one is made of a bright, light blue stone, the sort people use on good luck charms and the domes of great buildings--she can see no seams upon it, so it has to be carved out of one single giant gemstone. Yet Yassamin has never seen anything of that colour in that kind of size, not even among the precious pleasure objects Zainab houses in her treasure-chambers; it must be priceless.

"Turquoise?" 

"Aye. Happy anniversary, my love." 

He lays the tip of the wand on her cunny, letting the weight of it rest upon her clitoris: it feels marvellous, cool and heavy. 

"Oh..."

He chuckles. "Don't let me stop you. Tell me. What did you do, then?"

She bites her lip, her cunny squeezing delightfully as he rolls the tip of the wand across the top of her slit. "There's not much to tell," she says. "My fingers were already wet, so I pushed one into my arse and began to rub my clitoris--I only remember how fast I came, then."

"It _is_ like lightning sometimes," he murmurs, now dipping the head of the toy inside of her cunny, taking her shallowly with it, wetting the topmost bulb thoroughly with her sap and the malva. "It overtakes you so fast and then you only want more. Was it like that for you, too?"

"Yes," she says, now all of her stiffening as he presses the toy to her arse. "I tried two fingers, and it hurt a little more, but I remember being furious at not having anything bigger to put inside of myself, then." And as soon as she had met Jaffar, as soon as he had given her toys, she had sworn off the clumsy business of masturbating with her fingers altogether: ever since, she has preferred the simplicity and deeper reach of toys. "But worst of all--" she gasps, unable to speak for a while as he slides the first bulb inside of her arse, then the second and third, making all of her shudder--"oh, God!"

"Yes?" he tilts his head playfully. 

"You son of a bitch," she murmurs; both of them know what a shock such a sudden entry is, how uncomfortable: he'd done that deliberately to shake her. "And before you say it, even the maiden I would've called you names!"

"Really?" he laughs, rolling the wand inside of her, barely listening to her at all.

"I meant to say that the worst thing was the djinni chuckling behind my back," she huffs. "Just like you are doing now, except invisible. I called you a son of a bitch then, and I am calling you a son of a bitch, now."

"I love you, too," he sighs, adoring; his crooked teeth glimmer as he grins widely. "Now, let us see what I have made," he says and lies down between her legs. "Oh, but that is _beautiful,_ " he murmurs, brushing his fingertips across her swollen folds; "absolutely beautiful. I am sorry for teasing you so, my sweet, but you see, I had to have this; I was deprived of it before. The sight of your cunny whenever I put something up this little hole right here," he says and pulls the wand out a little, teasing her muscles with it, making her bite down on a wail. "I marvelled at it the first time I saw it, and marvel at it now--how it can swell from a little apricot to the lushest of peaches, and how the folds push out like the petals of the most wondrous of flowers," he sighs, nuzzling them with his lips, kissing the softness of her sex in adoration. "So plush, like heated _silk_ ," he murmurs. 

But now she is sobbing, tossing in her bonds: she is perversely glad that he has tied her up, now, for else she would fall off the bed with the way her entire body is now tensing, twitching. "Please, Jaffar. Please. Do not tease me any longer."

"Mmm," he says and sucks on each one of her folds, worrying at them with his teeth; "I would have you come on my mouth first. Shall we try for that lightning strike?" he says, without waiting for an answer; he begins to take her with longer strokes of the toy, now. It's as smooth as glass and slides in and out of her with great ease; already she is trickling onto his tongue.

And how could she resist? He is not leaving her any choice, he now greedily pushing her into another orgasm, drinking her pleasure from her; he is so intoxicated from her that he refuses to close down his mind and is projecting it straight at her, allowing her to see what he now sees. The shock of the redness of her cunny, such a bright dark pink between the pale flesh of her thighs; the way it indeed has swollen to twice its normal size, its lips so full and so plush from his taking of her, from his mouthing of her that it's almost as if he has done them violence. And as he pulls back to draw breath, the greater shock of her watching her own fluids pouring out from her cunny, wetting the toy, always as if inviting her arse to be sodomised. Clear and sweet, her cunny trickles in little bursts as Jaffar sucks her clitoris and takes her with the toy; clear and sweet, Jaffar drinks her with such tenderness that her taste mixes in with that of freshly swallowed tears. She is beautiful, oh, she is beautiful; this unending chant of joy now flows out of Jaffar's mind into her body, bathing her in his love: her body drinks it up just as he drinks her up into himself. 

Soon, indeed, that lightning-flash comes: but now, Yassamin is so sensitised and so sore that it hurts to come. She lets out a cry of pain, the sweetest of pains, not unlike the ecstasy she feels whenever he whips her; on and on the hard turquoise bulbs stretch and release the muscles of her arse, stretch and release, stretch and release until all of her is spasming with them, Jaffar's thrusts dancing her entire body upon but that small blue object. The blue of the turquoise, the blue of his eyes, the blue of that evening she had first given herself to her djinni in this manner: blue waves now join in with the lightning flashes, lashing through her with equal violence until all she can see is blue, blue flashing behind her eyes as if she had been staring straight at the sun. 

She is so weak, so weak, so exhausted: her eyes flutter half-open as she struggles to remain conscious, Jaffar now kissing the wand as if a Christian his crucifix. It is a sight that should turn her stomach, but she knows better than that, now: there is nothing that could not be washed pure, cleansed, burned to brightness by this love. Brightness, brightness as Jaffar finally covers her and enters her arse, she impaled upon a shaft of light, the whiteness now swallowing her entire body. What had been but thin ripples before, thin lashes of light running through her flesh now thicken into waves, a tide slowly rising with each of his thrusts, his hips opening in her a sea: she pours into his mouth a river of light. Her hands are free, her legs are free and flow across his back, down his buttocks, around his thighs; she flows and pools around him and into him and over him as rivulets there, whirlpools here, washing him with her light. 

"Light upon light," he murmurs unto her lips in awe, again opening his mind to her: he thinks of that time his womanhood had shown him the unfolding of the universe through God's light, Yassamin's expansion around him now enfolding, enwombing, enoceaning him in that same bliss once more. How he had been but an empty lantern until she had lit the flame inside of it, lighting his darkness, showing to him a way out: a way out, a way out, his freedom; into her great liberation he now surges as whiteness, as light, as sperm, her love finally having made him worthy of his name. Together, they rise and crest and crash once more, one mouth laughing into another at the beauty and the perfection of such an act bringing them closer to God than anything else has ever done. 

Always, always it is from the heights of debauchery that they have plunged into the greatest depths of spiritual insight: always, he is cackling with bliss the way he is now as he slips out of her, her cunny and arse slurping from how hard she's been taken. 

"Oh, God!" she cries and covers her face in embarrassment.

"It's always a sign I've truly fucked the demoness out of you!" he laughs and holds her, rocking her in his arms. "And that you've sucked the beast out of me in turn," he murmurs, kissing her face all over. "Do not think of it as farts, my love; it's but an exorcism."

"And you're ridiculous," she huffs but kisses him back, so that he cannot make any more disgusting jokes. "This is the man I have married?" she sputters. "One who finds God's light in sodomy?"

"Well, they always say that you find the greatest light in the deepest darkness," he cackles, sticking his finger inside her arse to illustrate his point, laughing as she slaps his hand away. "Prove me wrong!"

Out of breath, she pants against his forehead, her arms around his neck. "I suppose I have deserved you. I'm a sinful woman and have been saddled with..." she looks into his eyes. "No. I will not make that joke, in fact. Too many times I have joked about it, and I will not do so any longer. For you are the most wonderful husband a woman could ever hope to have."

He purses his mouth into an outrageous pout. "Not even a little scolding? A few terms of abuse now and then? At least some crockery smashed?"

She shakes her head. "You would enjoy it too much." But it is then that she remembers she might have, in fact, given him true pain. "How is your prick?" she says and looks down between them. 

"All soft, now. I don't think I did him damage."

"I heard that if a man wore one of those rings for too long, it would eventually weaken the circulation in his prick. And that he would no longer be able to have an erection without one."

He lets out a sigh of relief. "Thank God. I got a nag out of you at least. And here I thought you were turning into too much of an angel."

"I never nag and you know it," she says and leans down to inspect his prick, clasping it in her hand and studying the veins closely. "I only ever express _reasonable concern._ "

"It feels normal. If exhausted, and _more than a little sore,_ " he says and takes her hand off it.

"Very well," she says, dropping a little kiss upon its root. "These veins terrified me at first, actually. Before we seduced Theo, I thought all men had such prominent veins on their pricks," she says and straightens herself out once more. 

"Really?" he says. 

"Really. It was only afterwards that I read about how you can tell what a man's genitals look like by looking at his face," she says and traces his lower lip. "Prominent veins upon his temples foretell a veiny prick, and by the colour of his lips, you can tell the colour of his glans."

"How did _I_ never know that?" he grumbles. "It would've saved me from so many disappointments at the bath-house."

"Well, apparently you cannot tell anything about a man's _size_ from looking at his face. Presuming that is what you mean by disappointment."

"I believed in that myth about big noses for a while, for obvious reasons," he grumbles. "But Fadl's was just a coincidence. Do you think one could presume anything about a woman's cunny on the basis of her lips, then?"

"Ah, but for that, we have lip-paint."

"For the colour, yes," he says and drags her lower lip with his thumb, a last little flame of desire still flashing in his eyes. "But yours most certainly is as luscious as your mouth, my sweet," he says and takes her mouth with one last hungry kiss.

After, he waves his hand to cast the cleansing-spell upon both their genitals once more, so that they do not have to leave the bed to bathe. When she has finished yelping and grumbling, he pulls the nearest blanket over them and uses another spell to tuck it around them tight, so that they rest in a warm cocoon, a nest. 

"Have you had a good time, my sweet?" he asks her, lacing his fingers with hers.

"Yes," she murmurs, kissing his hand. "The most wonderful of days."

He raises his eyebrow and grins. "And we have six more to come."

She winces at that, feeling a twinge in her cunny and her arse at the thought. "We might have to make love only with our minds by the end of it. Otherwise, they'll find us dead of exhaustion by the end of it."

"We'll think of something," he says and kisses her head. "Did I tell you I had beads made of the turquoise as well?" he grins. "I can try them on first, if you like."

She rolls her eyes. "You're insatiable."

"Exactly the kind of husband required to satisfy a wanton nymph," he says and tickles her until she squeaks. "But now, my dear, hush. Sleep. You are going to need that mouth tomorrow when you pluck the beads out of my arse with your teeth," he hisses into her ear, giving it a soft lick.

Despite herself, her cunny tightens at that thought; she groans against his shoulder and beats his chest weakly with her fists. "You'll be the death of me. But I would not have it any other way," she says and curls up against him.

He chuckles softly and gathers her close, drawing a spell of deep rest over them both.


	4. Chapter 4

On the second day, he makes of himself to her an object of desire.

Bound, naked, suspended in the darkness of the shabestan, Yassamin is made to watch as Jaffar plays: bound with his magics in mid-air, she rests and watches as as he makes of himself an idol upon the dais, there for her to worship. 

And he is beautiful. 

For he has made himself a feast for her eyes, her soul, her flesh; in the golden glow of the lanterns, he, too, glows. His naked skin gleams from fragrant ointments, exuding perfumes dark and sweet and animal: an admixture of cunny-sweet fruit and flower courting the sharp, musky and ammoniac secretions of male animals. His hair spills onto his shoulders, its silver darkened, softened from rich and precious oils; here, too, dance scents male and female, his twin sexes ever at play, afrolic in the Arcadia of his body. 

Yet he has not made of himself a woman for her, not yet, knowing it's as the man she knew as bridegroom that she desires him the most: his femininity spills out through but his gestures, voices, looks, the way he moves his body to seduce.

And oh, how he seduces! Tinted with fresh henna, his fingers curl elegant as he dances there for her, silver earrings flashing as his eyes flash, black kohl making their blue ever more startling in contrast. Even if the lanterns give out only a gentle, yellow firelight unto the light brown walls--turning this shabestan into a warm womb-chamber--his eyes shine with their own light, it seems, a light altogether alien, strange. So many times has her soul spun in the skies of his eyes a falcon plunging forever, a swallow rising forever into his heavens bright; tonight is no different, and even as she hangs there weightless, suspended horizontally before him, she can feel her stomach lurching, her head spinning as if she were ten thousand feet high, in flight.

His rouged mouth purses, gleaming a glossy cherry-bright; he assumes a lazy pose upon the dais, one leg dangling off it, one pulled against his body as he lounges there, comfortable in his nakedness. His prick, still almost entirely soft, hangs over his sack, his genitals delicious and full and fat even in their laxness; proudly he displays them to her, knowing full well how her mouth now waters with the yearning to taste them, with the yearning to take them into her mouth, with the yearning to swallow his prick. Yes, she would swallow him; swallow him until her teeth clicked against the silvern ring he is again wearing for pleasure, pleasure his and hers.

His eyes flash with sweet, delicious wickedness as he takes her in, she his handiwork. Long moments has he spent at the art of carefully balancing her, making sure all weight had been taken off her body, even her head now held up by invisible bonds in her hair, pulling it up the way he would with his fist in the heat of passion.

He hooks his finger in a beckoning gesture and levitates her closer, closer; her heart breaks into a gallop and she lets out a gasp of terror at being so moved in the air, her entire body tensing, spasming, her legs jerking reflexively in anticipation of a fall. Yet now that he has brought her face to face with himself, he but brings that beckoning finger to lift up her chin and nuzzles her face, closing his eyes as he savours her.

"My sweet," he murmurs in love, "hush, my sweet. Never would I let you fall," he whispers onto her lips, "never, ever," mixing his cherry with her pomegranate; at this, a sob shatters in her chest. For he means more than this mere moment and they both know it: always has he held her through her terrors, always has he guided her through her darkest fears, his love her harness and her net, his care her guardian and her guide. "Are you comfortable?"

"Yes," she laughs in astonishment. "We should have done this ages ago!" she says, having been so jealous of Zainab when he had taken her in this very same manner almost two years ago. 

"Flex your hands for me?" he still asks and watches as she opens and closes her hands, fluttering her fingers, this an old, familiar rite for them to ascertain he has not impeded her blood flow. "Good girl," he says sweetly and kisses each and every one of her fingers, toes, she yelping as he gives a tender lick to the sole of each foot. "A most excellent start," he says and sits upon the dais once more, his legs now closed so that his knees touch, he perching himself upon the edge of it and swaying a little from side to side, exactly like an excited young girl.

"Where is your cane?" she asks. And where his clamps, his other instruments of erotic torture?

He but tilts his head and pouts, letting his hair bob playfully to one side. "Ooh, but I shan't need them this time, my sweet," he says and hops further back onto the dais so that he can spread his legs either side of himself, exposing to her the shock of his perineum and anus: they, too, are now painted a bright and sticky, gleaming cherry red. "I thought I would use Desire itself as a whip this time, and already you are cowering underneath its blows, my love!" he laughs as he holds himself open for her, like a sacred harlot presenting her vulva for worship, he now the one taking upon himself the role of the Babylonian demoness. "I thought to see how long you will last, how sharp and hard I can hone your want for me, to whet that need with a few choice... sights," he says, jerking a little himself as he dips a fingertip into the bud of his anus.

Yassamin but lets out a tortured moan. Already she is at the end of her cycle, the premenstrual heat making her cunny and her womb ache, her hips heavy and full of dark blood. Already has she entered those days upon which only the deepest, hardest and wildest of copulations will be enough to release the knots of frustrated energy in her loins; only the brutalmost of poundings from his prick, only the deepest of orgasms from the very root of her cunny can release the dark humours now weighing down her womb.

"You bastard," she groans, and it is but another "I love you," and chuckling, he plucks it from her pouting lips a fruit, savouring the tartness of her lip-paint.

"Nothing less for my queen," he says, murmuring the invocation she knows for the prayers of the elitemost of dancing-girls as they begin to perform for their richest of masters: "In the name of God, the most merciful and most clement, may He make sure that you are pleased with me," he whispers; "may my body and my voice please you and enchant you as no other's can."

 _That, they already do, beloved mine,_ she sighs into his mind, caressing his perineum with a psychic lick, his anus with a feather-kiss.

"Ah!" he cries and jerks back. "Please. I _would_ have you tell me what you feel and see--I was just going to ask you for that, you see--but I would not have you touch me until I tell you you may."

"All right," she says.

He kisses her once more and she feels a flash in the roof of her mouth: another spell, she realises, to keep her from touching him psychically. "I am taking no chances," he purrs in her ear as she glares at him. "I used to drive older men mad, furious from desire... one ended up in prison for tearing his shirt and throwing himself at me in front of the entire court, you see," he grins. "And he was an old man, old and feeble: nothing compared to the lust-addled fury of this _lilitu_ whose wings now flutter between my hands," he says, finishing with such a deep, skilled and passionate kiss she cannot protest any longer. 

He massages her scalp, gently pouring his love-wine into her, sucking her tongue and pressing it with his teeth, making of her tongue a little cock for him to take: when she screams from how hard this makes her cunny tighten, he finally pulls back, open-mouthed, panting; a string of saliva dangles between her mouth and his. A demon, he curls out his tongue and laps that string up, snaps it, finishing with a final, briefer kiss: a steady psychic connection now remains between them as he sits upon the dais, he feeling her each response and reaction deeply, intimately, his flesh singing with hers. 

"Now, we can begin." 

He gathers up cushions to rest his back against, plants his feet upon the soft rug covering the dais, again assuming the pose of a love-goddess: after a little pause for thought, he blows one of his fire-spheres from his palm to hover above himself and Yassamin so that she can see him better. Smiling, he watches himself through her eyes as he looks for just the right height to suspend the light from, drinking from her thrill as she takes in the sight of his painted, gleaming genitals more clearly than ever before. When he dribbles a little more of the glossy, cherried syrup--so thick and transparent it is like pink honey--over his perineum, making it into a veritable little cunny, Yassamin's sex clenches so tightly it _hurts._ So violently does this squeeze rock her body that Jaffar's prick follows it, he feeling her lust-convulsion as his own: his half-hard cock bobs, nods upwards, beginning its rise towards his belly.

With an audacious, narcissistic groan, he leans back upon the cushions and sucks the excess syrup from his fingertips. But more than the taste, he savours Yassamin's frustration, each subsequent clench and flutter of her cunny filling his cock all the more; as the glistening liquid drips down his perineum to his anus, he himself moans at the deliciousness of the sight.

Yassamin the sodomite growls in her throat, Yassamin the woman fevered from the massive heat and weight of the blood packed into her genitals: so heavy is her sex that it is not unlike those times they have played with heavy, metallic spheres in her cunny. And just as she had done with the spheres, Yassamin now deliberately squeezes her cunny's muscles tightly, imagining she is milking his cock, nestled deeply within; all right, she may not actively caress him herself, but if he is feeling her every clench in his prick, she is not going to waste this opportunity to tease him in turn.

"Naughty," he purrs, opening his eyes with a languid flutter of his lashes. Now, he takes his hands to either side of his anus, spreading it, massaging its sides with his fingertips. "Would you like a taste, my sweet?" he asks, tilting his head a cat.

"Please," she says, and her mouth is dry, the words catching in her throat; "I would like it very much, my love."

"Pity," he croons, a wicked laughter dragging in his throat as she begins to toss in her fury, as she realises he'd asked her but to tease: now, she knows he will not be giving her even a taste for a long while yet. "No, no, my sweet. I have a mind to make you watch as I make love to _myself._ You _do_ look so beautiful when you are furious," he purrs. "And it is a fury I want atop me the moment I set you free and let you have your wicked way with me."

"She is already here," Yassamin groans, knowing it is to no avail. "I thought you were always afraid I would snap it off!" she says and glances at his prick.

"You like him too much to ever do such a thing," he says playfully and strokes the underside of his cock with one hand's fingertips, his other hand's fingers playing at the rim of his arse, caressing its thick and firm bud luxuriously. "And this, your wicked little tongue loves so, too. More than you have ever loved a woman's sex between my legs, is that not so?"

She swallows, shuddering from her shame; nevertheless, he is right. As much as she loves the cunny--and it is not a little--she has always preferred him in a male body, the perverse thrill of anilingus always triumphing over the joy she derives from sucking a cunny. Even if the taste of a sweet cunny is, objectively speaking, pleasanter, it is the art of mouth on arse that is to her an act as profoundly spiritual as any of their devotional, magical practices. The alchemy of taking the dirtiest part of the human body and cleansing it for love, and above all, the shock of how intensely Jaffar reacts to being taken with a tongue are to her a wonder sublime: never does she feel as powerful as a lover than when she has his entire body dancing, spasming, unravelling upon her tongue. 

Therefore, it is a quiet "Yes" that she now whispers to him in full surrender, never taking her eyes off his arse. Even now, she is struggling to see what he is doing: he picks up this thought from her and makes sure to let her see exactly how much he is tugging upon his muscles with his fingertip, now; he gasping in delight as through her eyes, he can spy a little flash of blue in the gape, Yassamin's surprise travelling through his body a lash of delight.

"Oh, my God," she moans, shivering as he pushes out with his muscles, the unmistakable bright pale blue of turquoise peeking out from his stretching hole. The spheres he had talked about, the spheres cut from giant gemstones, thousands of dinars now lodged inside of his arse--oh, but this is _ridiculous!_

Yet, this is so very typical of Jaffar. "How many have you got inside of you now?!" she asks, sputtering. And how long has he been wearing them? He must have had them inside of himself for an hour at least!

"Three," he says, his voice straining as he relaxes and the turquoise disappears into the darkness of his body once more; his arse purses shut and dribbles out another streak of syrup, Yassamin now feeling a twinge in her own arse at the sight. So that's why she had felt the idea of sexual beads so vividly: some of his sensations must have seeped into her through their psychic link. "And there are no strings to them, either," he rasps, his belly heaving as he lies there, his guts doubtless heavy from the spheres. "I thought I would... give myself a little challenge," he laughs and flexes his muscles once more, the blue peeking out and disappearing rhythmically, now.

She rolls her eyes. They are _women's spheres._ He has used women's spheres, ones meant for exercising the muscles of the cunny only--oh, God. Zainab had told her enough horror stories of people dying with various objects stuck inside their arses and blocking their guts, or at least of people crumbling from embarrassment at having had to call a midwife to help extract their toys after foolhardy play. Some men in important positions, from good families, had even chosen to commit suicide rather than seek help, lest their families' reputations be forever ruined.

"You had better have a spell for removing them if they get stuck!" Yassamin groans. 

"Enough of this jolly banter," Jaffar snaps and beckons towards her with his hand; with this gesture, he brings Yassamin flush with his body, taking her by the hair and burying her face in his arse. "Besides, taking them out is _your_ job, my sweet," he chuckles, the vibrations of his laughter meeting the vibrations of her moans inside of his body, rippling sweetly through the spheres. "Do that again," he groans, himself now letting out a tremulous, lamenting cry like a Bedouin songstress--it's absolutely outrageous, ridiculous, but as Yassamin makes a similar noise into his arse and he shows to her the pleasure he feels from it, she cannot argue against it. 

"Let me see," he says, pulling her head back by the hair; "oh..." he now pants, the skin of his thighs white around his fingertips as they press into his flesh. He strains and pushes out again, whimpering as he feasts upon the sight through her eyes: the blue sphere now peeks halfway out of his body, the muscles of his arse stretched around it, completely unfolded like a grotesque pink flower. 

Oh, but he is open, open; all of him now lies unfolded for her, and she shivers. This, this is the exact thing Yassamin always labours to accomplish with her hands and her tongue: the folds of his arse opened, smoothed, revealing their hidden surfaces to her; their sweat, their heat, their flavour. It is a hopeless sound, a pitiful sound, an embarrassing sound that now pours out of her mouth as she laps and laves at the open ring of flesh with her tongue; yet, soon, the way Jaffar keeps pressing and rubbing her face against him, that noise deteriorates into outright snorts, huffs.

"Lick, my child, lick," he speaks rapidly, his voice turning into a lisp; "I made it sweet for you, so sweet for you, my love, _delicious._ The exact thing you like, a little--" and there, he pauses, poised upon the tip of his need--

 _A little **cunt,**_ she moans into his mind, knowing that is exactly the word he wants, needs: "A cunt," she laughs and looks up, rewarded by the most exquisite of tremors from him, a loud wail, his fingers scrabbling in her hair. That he should so adore hearing this while in a male body, a slur thrown at that part in him that is sodomite--when he is in his female body, it is no slur at all, but a thing fully embraced, cherished, loved. But here, he is asking for her to use it as a balm, to heal the wounds inflicted upon him in his youth every time he had been abused for so enjoying lying underneath men. Back then, only Fadl had glorified this part in him; yet their relationship had always been strained, one of hate as much as it was of love: of all his lovers, only Yassamin has ever used this term of his arse in full, uncomplicated celebration and love. 

"I'm going to--" Jaffar gasps, throwing his head back upon the cushions, and Yassamin is there, ready, there: she opens her mouth and captures the sphere that now falls out of his arse. With a shiver, she clasps it between her teeth, savouring its taste with her tongue; it is only cherry that she is now tasting, but what will she taste with the third one? Another shiver lashes through her at the thought, and as Jaffar's head lolls forwards, he loves her by showing her exactly how much her body is enjoying this: he gifts to her the sight of her cunny dripping down onto the bed underneath her in _strings._

But now, her jaw aches and she has to let go of the sphere: it thuds heavily onto the mattress, Yassamin coughing as she raises her eyes back to Jaffar. His arse is still spasming like a grotesque mouth as it slowly purses shut once more, his body adjusting to the last two spheres sliding further down inside his pelvis; just as her cunny drips, so does his arse drip with a thick string of the pink syrup. 

And upon his belly, another kind of syrup: his prick lifts with his breathing, having dripped so much that his navel is full of his sap; as he glances down at himself and groans, a streak of it dribbles down his side. To think that they have made such a mess, and that this is but the beginning! Oh, but Yassamin wants to bathe in his stickiness, to be drowned in it a bee in amber. 

"Would my bee care for another taste of her flower's nectar?" he now asks, fond, wiping sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand. 

"Need you even ask?" she says, licking up the seam of his perineum, kissing it worshipfully. Now, she is so entranced from her state of arousal that her cunny's pain seems to her distant; truly he is succeeding in his whipping of her with this ritual if already she is sunken into a state similar to the pain-trances he gifts to her with his whip. So entranced is she, in fact, that she has to struggle to awaken herself enough to begin licking at his arse once more, unfolding him with her tongue; as the second sphere touches her tongue, she can feel a taste deeper, saltier. Now, he has to strain more to push it out, shifting upon the dais, lifting his hips; it is the strangest of positions, and she wonders if he is thinking this some queer analogy of childbirth. But if he does, wouldn't he have chosen a female body for that? 

But then, the second sphere falls out and to her great regret, she fails to catch it with her mouth: it slips off her tongue and her lips and falls onto the mattress, clicking against its companion. "I'm sorry."

"That'll teach you to think of childbirth in the middle of sex!" he laughs. "But no, the thought crossed my mind, too. However, now, I would wish for you to focus--it's the last one," he says and begins to push the last of the spheres to the mouth of his arse. 

"I'm sorry," she says and kisses his arse; she can feel him levitating her a little closer, he himself shuffling a little further back on the dais so that the tip of her chin is touching the rug. 

However, this time the task is more difficult. This sphere has been embedded so deep inside of him that it takes him a longer while to push it out, the way a stomach upset forces one to stay in the privy for a long time to empty the very ends of one's guts: for a brief while, panic flashes through both him and Yassamin as they wonder whether he will be able to push the sphere out on his own after all. 

_Do you want me to help?_ she asks him. She has reached inside of him before by means magical; perhaps she could now apply a little pressure on the back of the sphere to help it out. 

"Please," he says and falls onto the cushions. "But let me rest for a moment." He lets go of his legs, his knees shaking, his arms slumped from strain; he lies there and heaves, collecting his strength. _It does feel wonderful, still,_ he murmurs to her in his mind, a little sap beading out of his prick once more as the sphere presses upon his prostate. _I am going to miss it,_ he thinks and sends the sensation to her: she now feels the same pressure upon the back of her womb and equally, trickles, all hair on her body standing on end. _Can you feel that?_

"Marvellous," she murmurs, kissing his thigh. 

But he can feel her jaw aching, can feel her getting sore all over; he has mercy on her and arranges himself back into the right position and pushes. She, in turn, insinuates tendrils of her mind inside of him, to that curve between his rectum and his colon and pushes there, nudging the sphere lower until it reaches the gatekeeping muscles of his anus. Finally, with a last, hard groan, he manages to push the sphere out to its widest part, all of him red, panting, the veins upon his temples thick and straining. She is loath for this to end, her mouth watering as she sees the flecks of mucus upon the sphere, wanting to savour this for a long time--but if they go on for much longer, she fears he will have a heart attack.

And she can't have that. Reverently, she spreads her tongue wide and laps up the film of mucus from the sphere, savouring the salt of him, the deepest, darkest must of his gut; the taste of it curlicues straight into her cunny, pursing strings of wetness out of her just as the stretch now purses sap out of his cock. She sobs, he sobs, dripping in time as together, they push the sphere out and it slides into her mouth. 

Her teeth click around it and she opens her eyes. 

Jaffar's arse heaves, gapes and in the light of the fireball, she can see straight inside of his guts: the tender, vulnerable pink surfaces of them, the ripples of them, the white and yellow specs of mucus. And it is so strange that a sight that anyone else would find shocking awakens in her an utmost tenderness and care instead, a desire to soothe what little pain the act has given him; she spits out the sphere and buries her tongue in his arse, humming sweetly in love inside of him, sighing her love into his flesh.

 _My love! Love of all my loves,_ she sings into him, them sliding into the softest of psychic orgasms together, a wave, two, three washing over them, washing them clean. _That you should so share yourself with me as no man has ever shared himself with his woman,_ she sobs into him, her tears streaking across his buttocks. Her entire head aches so much, now, her tongue hurting as she curls it, the muscles of her neck close to cramping, but she cannot stop. On and on the waves of their release come, cresting and falling and cresting once more; Jaffar shudders underneath her tongue, clutching her head to himself, and on and on she sings, licks, takes him with her tongue.

 _To the very depths of your flesh you have taken me, as woman does unto her man, exposing herself so: but that you should give me this even in your male body, your loving body, the entirety of your body but love itself--_ "Oh, Jaffar, Jaffar, Jaffar," is all she can say before her head lolls onto the dais and she is exhausted, too exhausted to sing any more.

"My sweet, my sweet, my sweet," he murmurs and lowers her gently over himself, freeing her from her bonds, her pleasure still so great it radiates through his body in warm waves. "Is there any other woman in the world who would understand it, cherish it the way you do, so deeply, so intuitively, without me even needing to fashion my desire into words?" he asks, stretching in her glow. "No, no; only my Yassamin, my Yassamin," he sighs into her hair and rolls her within his embrace; with each hug, he presses more waves out of her, washing himself with them, suspended in her sweetness.

For a long while, they lie there as the golden waves of pleasure ebb from their flesh, leaving them both languid, sated: but this is in the body only, Yassamin is sure of this--Jaffar must want something more still, or else he would not have gone to all this trouble. She does not even ask if he has planned something else for them next--going by the fact that he has not allowed himself to ejaculate yet, she knows this has been but the beginning of the play. 

"Correct," he murmurs. "But should you wish to sleep, I am fine with that," he says. "In fact, I think I am in need of a nap myself," he says. 

It is then, with a great yelp from Jaffar, that Yassamin lifts them with her magic and flips them off the dais and onto the great bed below. They tumble onto the mattress, landing upon soft cushions; soon enough, she has drawn the warmest of blankets over them both. 

"I must say I am impressed," he laughs and blows hair from his eyes.

She fixes his smeared lip-paint with her fingertip. "I learned from the best. Although I worry whether I should even allow you to gather your energy for whatever nefarious tortures you have planned for us next," she says, giving a mock-shudder. 

He kisses her nose. "I promise not to dangle you like that any more. I might bind you, but you will get to lie down or sit the next time."

She raises her eyebrow. "How kind."

He chuckles and rubs up against her, still half-hard against her belly. "You will thank me for it," he says, and just in time, he locks his mind from her when he can sense her prying into it, trying to find out what it is exactly that he has got planned. "But now, sleep a little, my child," he says and pats her on the cunny. "You will need it."

"You'll be the death of me," she groans and fluffs up a pillow underneath her head. 

"Aye, but we will go together, and expire from pleasure!" he cackles, his eyes gleaming wide, mad.


	5. Chapter 5

Yassamin yawns and stretches. With a pleasant groan, she turns around to seek Jaffar's warmth, but in vain: already he is awake, and going by the sound of it, he is preparing something on the dais behind the bed. 

She turns around to see what it is and immediately, she is so startled that she wakes up fully, from sheer fright: there is a stranger here, another man--

Except it's not. 

"Sarosh," she groans and rolls her eyes. "Jaffar, what on earth have you done to him?"

For now, Sarosh looks more real than ever, more human than any of their dolls ever have done: instead of silver, his skin is entirely human-coloured, the exact same light golden brown as Jaffar's. 

"Do you find it displeasing, mistress?" Jaffar now asks her through Sarosh's mouth, feeding telepathically to him the words as he himself sits beside Sarosh, grinning.

She pulls a sheet over her breasts, shuddering a little. To call him displeasing would not be sufficient to describe the horror she now feels as she looks upon the living doll sitting there on the dais, the doll gazing back at her with an unholy fire in its eyes. "Dolls are one thing, but now I know why the imitation of life is considered blasphemy. He looks _too_ real, Jaffar. It..." she swallows, but feels too strongly about this to hold her tongue. "It disturbs me, terrifies me. Nay, Jaffar, it outright sickens me. You yourself _must_ see why."

Sarosh's face falls; beside him, Jaffar's. 

"I suppose so," Jaffar says through his own lips, now, dejected; the cheerful mood with which he had been preparing the doll now crushed. "I only thought to please you, too: to truly give to you the love of another Jaffar. Know that I did not mean to frighten you." 

And she can sense that he feels she is now rejecting _him,_ Jaffar himself, Sarosh now such a complete twin of his they look exactly the same. He keeps his mind closed to hers, his face grave as he throws Sarosh's cover over him, the type of dark velvet cloth they drape over all their dolls while they are held in storage. 

"I am sorry, Jaffar," she says, so ashamed of herself she daren't even embrace Jaffar to comfort him, the way she would immediately do otherwise. "I was fast asleep, and he gave me a fright. And I understand the thrill of it for you, but... he makes my blood run cold. If you wish for me to play with him again, you must turn him back."

"Must I?" he asks, now staring at the covered Sarosh, not looking at Yassamin at all; his voice is so defiant it frightens her. She and Jaffar rarely, if ever, argue: this is why his demeanour now chills Yassamin to the bone. 

"I made him look like that for _you,_ " he spits, still not looking at her. "It took me a _month_ to create the skin. It was what kept me sane during the fountain job. _This,_ " he says and lifts his cupped hand towards Sarosh, "is what I returned to work on each night for this past month, dreaming of the happiness he would give us. But most of all, what kept me going was the thought of your _smile._ The smile upon your face, the delight in your eyes, the _desire_ in your eyes when you finally saw him," he says, his voice now raw, anguished, he clearly holding back tears out of sheer anger. 

Now, he casts down his eyelashes, clutching his hands into fists, the hands with which he had crafted this thing he thought he'd pleasure her with but had repulsed her with instead. And as he crouches there naked, he looks vulnerable and ill, looks his age: an old man of fifty-eight, tired and thin with his ribs showing through his skin, his sparse gray hair hanging miserable out of his ponytail. "Serves me right," he hisses through clenched teeth, now so like the embittered Jaffar he had been before their marriage. "They say one should never dream in such detail; that it is a recipe for disappointment. That's why I rarely do dream these days, you realise; I try not to have hopes so that there's nothing for Fate to crush. If I'd had any idea that you might dislike him..." 

He shakes his head, then finally looks at her, searching her with confused eyes. "What's come over you, my love?" he asks her, his voice soft now that he can see how upset she is--for having upset _him._ "Never have you been like this before, my demoness; never have you turned down a lovers' game. And God knows we have played games far more perverse than this."

When she still but sits there, clutching the sheet to her chest, her knuckles white, not knowing what to say, his frown deepens. He reaches out his hand to her, his anger thawed a little by concern. "Come, Yassamin. Now _you_ make _my_ blood run cold."

"I'm sorry," she says, now bursting into tears, shaking there, weeping so much she cannot even see his face. If she had been more awake just now, she could have controlled herself, she thinks; if she had had her wits about her, she would have suppressed her fear and bent her will to enjoy this gift of his, just like she has always done before. Always, always when she's been afraid of a new game Jaffar has initiated, she has been able to force her fears down and to reshape her mind, her attitude--just as one programs one of their dolls, just as one transforms one's state of consciousness for magic. Always, always has she been able to coax her mind into openness, into taking in something new, making of herself a woman bolder, a woman new: a Yassamin able to not merely endure but _enjoy_ and relish whatever she has been offered. Always, always has she been able to turn whatever has come her way into pleasure, and now she feels like a failure, having failed not only Jaffar and his love but _herself._

And Jaffar hears all of this as her feelings now pour out of her with her tears, sees her thought-processes as they unfold, the routes her logic takes: now, he feels ashamed not only for his own self-pity, but that he has lashed her with it so. "I'm sorry, too," he says and now climbs off the dais and onto the bed, gathering her into his arms. "I cradled vain hopes, and then sprung this abomination upon a woman half-asleep," he murmurs into her hair, stroking her back, capturing the sobs from her ribcage into his palms, his loving palms, the tight safety of his arms. "Please don't think I'm truly angry with you, my love," he says, his voice creaking, feline; "or that I fault you for this, for anything; oh, please, Yassamin. I could not bear it."

"Then what am I to think?" she asks, sobbing; it seems there are still some foul humours hanging heavy within her, some stress still left in her from the past month's work that Jaffar has not managed to whip out yet; she wipes her eyes and her nose into the sheet still in her hand. 

"I suppose we should both think of it as a lesson, something to seek growth from," he murmurs into her hair. "Perhaps this is God telling us to be merciful to ourselves and each other, even when we have given in to our weaknesses. I have been too much the fantasist, the dreamer, and you... you have not even been weak, here; merely tired, my sweet! We cannot always be the wise philosophers we pretend to be to our children, now can we?" he laughs softly, rocking her in his arms. 

"I wonder what they're doing now," she says, looking at the covered Sarosh over Jaffar's shoulder. "While we just spend our time in idle play."

" _Restorative_ play, _healing_ play, a holiday we have deserved and have put off for far too long," he tells her, sternly. "I expect them to be fast asleep, actually. It's just gone two o'clock."

"I feel perfectly awake, now, however," she says; "it is not unlike Ramadan." For these, the first few days of their new honeymoon, they have rested for most of the day and celebrated at night: when the children arrive, they'll have to adjust their sleep again, back to normal hours. Already she dreads it--

"Yassamin! There you go, worrying about something that's several days away still," he scolds her, gently. "I wonder if I should..."

"Yes," she says, having guessed what he thinks. "You should punish me. For so disappointing you, and so that you might whip my foolishness out of me. Perhaps then, I could take Sarosh after all. Besides, it'd do you good, too; I hate seeing you so miserable."

And it is astonishing how, again, she feels this is exactly the opposite of what most couples do: when they explode at each other, it is purely an outflowing of anger, always one or both truly hurting the other, creating festering wounds of hurt and distrust. But the way she and Jaffar settle their differences, agreeing to purge their anxieties through love-play, through a mutual contract made _before_ the lash descends... well. Could there be anything more purifying, more balancing, more equal? 

He pulls back and lifts her chin. "Is this what you truly want, then, my child?" he asks, having listened to her thoughts once more. 

"Oh, go on, then," she laughs, sniffling back her tears a little, rocking her hips playfully. "Show him to me?"

"Will that be your punishment?" he laughs. "All right."

He pulls the velvet cover off Sarosh, tossing it aside with a flourish; he makes sure not to turn Sarosh on yet, leaving him sitting still on the dais with his eyes closed, his prick lax. 

"Still terrifying?" Jaffar asks.

"A little," she says, now letting go of the sheet and shuffling to the dais so that she can get a good look at Sarosh. 

And it is only now that she can truly appreciate Jaffar's craftsmanship: the skin he has grafted for Sarosh is indeed exquisite. It seems to be made from the new plant-gum material Jaffar had developed, only painted in fleshly hues: Jaffar has made his skin textured, even, seemingly having patted the drying gum with sponges and patches of leather to make it look more natural. 

"But this is amazing!" she exclaims. "You'll make a fortune with this thing."

Jaffar comes to embrace her from behind, tucking his chin over her shoulder. "I am glad."

"He _does_ still disturb me, however," she says. "How would I now be able to tell you two apart? If not for the four arms. What if--what if, in the middle of a loving bout, I saw but a leg, a face?" 

"Easily," he says. "See here?" See how smooth his arms are, how smooth his legs? I was unable to give him body hair. That would have taken too long--the human body has tens of thousands of individual hairs; all of them would have to be sewn in by hand. So I left him as he was, hairwise."

He is right: the only hair Sarosh possesses is on his head and his face--a perfect copy of Jaffar's hair, eyebrows, eyelashes and his thin, rakish moustache. But now that they are all surrounded by warmly coloured, seemingly living skin--Jaffar has even painted a fine tracery of veins all over--the effect is uncanny. The things you could do with these dolls, inside and outside the bedroom! "You could completely replace a living person with these for a while," she says, astonished, "to use one as a decoy to avoid assassins... you could install one as regent, even--talk about puppet kings!"

"I thought of that, too," Jaffar laughs, patting her hips. "We have to choose very carefully whom we show these dolls to, let alone sell them to," he says. "Lest they slay us as heretics or get us embroiled in conspiracies. And I have had enough conspiracies for a lifetime," he winces.

"Turn him on," she says, looking at Jaffar over her shoulder.

"Are you sure?" Jaffar asks.

"I have to get over my fear somehow."

"All right," he says. "But before I do, would you care to hear what it was I had planned for us tonight?"

"Do tell."

"Well. I thought we would both enjoy him, but now... I said I would not bind you again, but you seem to need it," he says and slaps her buttocks as he moves to climb onto the dais once more. "Methinks I shall whip you with but the sight of myself and Sarosh. See? You would not have to play with him at all, and I would still get to enjoy the tortured look upon your face," he grins. " _And_ , as I had hoped all along, I would still have you mad from lust once I let you go, ready to pounce me and have your wicked way with me. How does that sound?"

She rolls her eyes. "I thought you said you no longer dreamt wild dreams, husband."

"But come, what do you think of it?"

"All right," she says. She had been hoping for a whipping, but she still bears welts and bruises from last night, and already she is sore from having been strung up with his invisible ropes. He is but thinking of her health, and for that, she is grateful. "If you but promise to tie me up tight," she says--and by this, he knows she means the embrace of his psychic bonds, the next best thing when it comes to pressing her anguish out of her. 

"I shall," he says and blows her a kiss. "And will take you with great vigour after, to press out the rest of whatever anguish may remain; of that, you can be certain. Do not think I will let you leave this room without being thoroughly ravished, my lady," he grins. "Make yourself comfortable, my love: you will be staying that way for a while."

"All right," she says, a flush of love already warming her limbs, his smile melting her from the inside. She sits down cross-legged, facing the dais, her knees touching its side; she settles her arms and legs comfortably, her spine straight the same way she does whenever they meditate together.

It is then that Jaffar's bonds come around her, making her gasp in delight as they slither across her body, he making of them a series of caresses; like living, golden vines, they creep around her waist, cupping her breasts. Just like upon that blue jacket he had given to her when he had first courted her, when he had bound her with the golden vines of his love--that he would remember such a detail! 

"How could I ever forget?" he asks, tilting his head as he moves his hand elegantly to and fro, guiding the vines across her skin.

Now, the vines curl around her body tighter, harder, squeezing her breasts; they pull at her nipples, pinching them while others swirl between her legs, spreading her cunny tenderly as if he were spreading her with his fingertips. She lets out a cry, another, sweet little shrieks of delight as Jaffar lifts her legs so that now she is the one in a birth-giving position: _So that I can have a good view, my sweet,_ he purrs in her ear, the purr itself vibrating through the vines across her skin, into her flesh, into her very bones and her marrow. 

Indeed, with the vines he now takes the weight off her body so that she can be kept in this new position comfortably: he opens her legs and binds them firmly, making sure little tendrils of the vines now press and curl about her cunny's folds, the root of her clitoris, the vines curling and uncurling like ferns around her nipples, one even brushing against the bud of her anus.

"Oh, my God," she moans in delight, laughing; he has not bound her like this for a long while--not in such a lewd display.

He returns her laughter, soft, glad. "I have to disappoint you a little in telling you this, my sweet, but I have to admit I had dreamt of this, too, for tonight, rather than giving you pain. Are you complaining?"

"No," she says and moans as the tendrils curl up her neck, caressing her ears like brushes of golden lips, massaging her scalp, lifting up her hair and tugging on it just the way she likes to have her hair held in Jaffar's fist. Only this time, the touch is far more delicate than that of the simple psychic ropes he had used earlier tonight. Now, the vines curl all around her scalp, pour down past her ears like jewellery, caressing her temples, her forehead; again they slide down her neck like soft whispers, like feathers as they sweep over her breasts and curl down and about her sex. And now, everywhere, the tendrils alternate touches soft and sharp: pinches tempered with soft brushes, squeezes turning into caresses, slaps and taps turning into massaging motions. 

"You are spoiling me," she groans and throws back her head, relaxing completely in her bonds. Ecstatic, she hangs there, shivering as the vines ripple around her, all of her aglow.

"Mmm. But your anguish _is_ being pressed out of you perfectly, is it not?" he asks, flicking his fingers softly, sweetly, sealing the vine-spell by tying in the air a complex knot. "There."

"I love you," she slurs, drunk, drunk.

"I take it that it's working, then," he says, brushing a tendril across her open mouth in a soft, glad, laughing kiss. "Now, my sweet--" he says and guides the vines to tilt her head forwards so that she can see, "I am going to awaken Sarosh. Are you ready?"

"Yes," she murmurs; her fears have receded far into the distance, like a ship's white sail only barely visible on the horizon. "Show him to me."

"Sarosh," Jaffar says, the way he calls out his children's names when he awakens them; "arise and greet your mistress."

Sarosh opens his eyes. 

Yassamin gasps; now, she cannot look away, unable to turn her head in any case, as it seems Jaffar is holding her eyelids open with a spell. Thus, she forces herself to keep on looking at Sarosh, then Jaffar, barely able to tell them apart from this distance. 

But it is by his eyes that she can tell Sarosh is the one of them that is a machine: the sapphires Jaffar had forged Sarosh's eyes from are a darker blue than Jaffar's own, and after all, nothing man could artifice could ever compare to the blaze in Jaffar's eyes. This gives her comfort, no matter how disturbing Sarosh's gaze is to her; for Sarosh hardly ever blinks, only whenever Jaffar tells him to, adding to his uncanny appearance. 

Of course, it is at that that Jaffar makes Sarosh flutter his lashes like a dancing-girl, like the vainest of effeminate eunuchs; Jaffar's stomach ripples with his chuckles as he gazes upon his twin. "Show yourself to her, Sarosh; display to her your beauty."

It is then that Sarosh stretches his arms, flexing their muscles; his stomach, too, ripples as he imitates breathing--another new function Jaffar seems to have given him--and moves around on the dais a little, arranging himself into the same cross-legged position Jaffar now sits in. But before that, Jaffar makes sure to give Yassamin a lingering look at his buttocks, the beauty of his lithe thighs and legs, the way the warm lantern light now plays upon his new skin, making him glow golden all over. 

"Is he not beautiful?" Jaffar asks, guiding Sarosh to still once more, his hands in his lap, his eyes half-lidded as he sits there.

"He is," Yassamin says, still shivering in fright inside, but now that fright is distant, disappearing past the horizon, soon to be seen no more. 

"My body is yours, mistress," Sarosh now intones, solemn; "I exist but to pleasure you."

Of course, Jaffar had asked him to say that; but he enjoys making a play out of this, now leaning towards Sarosh to whisper loudly in his ear. "However, my friend, it is my mistress's wish that you should pleasure me tonight instead. This would be her pleasure, too, you see," he says and lays a greedy hand upon Sarosh's golden thigh, brushing his groin with his fingertips. 

And now, Sarosh turns his head, the movement so fluid it is ten times more disturbing than Jaffar's own, unnaturally elegant movements; it is as if he were made of liquid. And in a way, he is: the living, magical silver he is cast from is never truly solid; this, Yassamin remembers having presented a challenge as she had been building him together with Jaffar. To think that she should be afraid of the doll that had been half her own creation, the toy whose creation she had initiated herself when she had requested it of Jaffar! _Oh, what a fool I have been,_ she now thinks as Sarosh lowers his long eyelashes flirtatiously and devours Jaffar with the most seductive of calculated gazes. 

"It would be my pleasure to serve," Sarosh now says, cupping the back of Jaffar's head, undoing his ponytail; Jaffar shivers visibly, from a mixture of terror and thrill. Always, whenever he has played with Sarosh, Jaffar has been the one submitting; the way he prefers it with men, this the safest way for him to completely surrender unto another man's power.

And Yassamin is thrilled by this, too, thrilled beyond belief. She whimpers as the vines rub and press at her clitoris, her sex already swelling between her legs; already she is making a wet stain upon the sheets as she watches Sarosh take Jaffar's mouth in an open-mouthed, deep, lasciviously-tongued kiss. She rarely enjoys being the one doing the taking, but when it's someone else doing it to Jaffar and she can but enjoy watching the play--oh, her cunny tightens so violently that her stomach trembles from the power of her arousal, one clench following another until her breath is squeezed from her lungs.

And now, Jaffar is whimpering into Sarosh's mouth, one pair of Sarosh's arms around his waist, another tugging at his hair with both hands; "Take me," he meaows, panting against Sarosh's mouth, already having made Sarosh's moustache glitter with his saliva. 

"Then, suck," Sarosh says, in a tone more commanding than Yassamin has ever heard him use before; another innovation dictated by Jaffar's own need, the need he now exhibits shamelessly as he bends down to take Sarosh's prick into his mouth. 

Proudly, Jaffar displays himself, arching his back as he goes down on all fours, swaying his arse in the air. Whorishly, he whimpers onto Sarosh's cock as Sarosh slaps his arse, spreads it, toys with it with his fingers; wet smears appear upon his buttocks and thighs from the oil now pursing out of Sarosh's fingertips.

Already, Jaffar seems to have commanded Sarosh's cock to expand to its full size; enormous, it now chokes Jaffar's throat, Jaffar taking great pride in being able to fellate him so deeply. How often has he been practicing while Yassamin's back has been turned? He must have been doing this several times a week, and instead of being jealous, Yassamin now finds her cunny pulsing at the idea, she tossing in her bonds just as Jaffar now tosses when Sarosh plunges a few well-oiled fingers into his arse.

But now, she cannot see those fingers sinking in, can only guess: Jaffar is sideways in front of her. "Please," she cries so that Jaffar might hear her over the sound of Sarosh's mechanisms; "please, my love, turn around. I would see."

She had expected Jaffar to merely turn around, but no, no: this new position Sarosh now manhandles him into, lifting him as easily as if he were the doll--with Jaffar's accompanying mewls of delight--must be something Jaffar had planned beforehand. 

For now, Jaffar lies on his back with his legs spread before Yassamin, so that his arse is only a few inches from her face, pushed to the edge of the dais: not unlike the position he had been in when he had been teasing her with the turquoise spheres. 

Yassamin, in turn, chokes upon a cry, her cunny pulsing as she watches Sarosh now turning around on top of Jaffar and sinking his cock into Jaffar's mouth, sucking Jaffar into his own mouth in turn. He spreads Jaffar's arse for Yassamin's eyes, two of his hands now occupied solely in its teasing, tugging Jaffar's buttocks open with great force; Jaffar sobs hopelessly between his gags as Sarosh takes his throat more brutally than even Fadl would. Sarosh balances there with but one of his upper hands on the dais, his superhuman strength holding his entire body up easily; with the other, he strokes Jaffar's already-firm cock in his hand, squeezing it in his fist so tightly it's purpling, surely giving Jaffar pain, shocking Yassamin with its intensity.

But Jaffar is in Paradise; Paradise as he licks Sarosh's cock, sucks his balls, mouths his arse. Going by the sounds of it, he has daubed some delicious flavour into Sarosh's arse, one he can only discover by digging his tongue as deep as it can go; this, Yassamin can sense from the few thoughts she can snatch from him in the tussle. Jealous, her own mouth waters; she closes her eyes and focuses on the taste, whatever it is that Jaffar has now used to recreate the musty, salty taste of a human arse now spreading onto his tongue.

 _Well-fermented murri sauce, actually,_ Jaffar thinks at her, cackling mischievously.

 _Did you **have** to tell me that?_ she laugh-groans, her own tongue aching as she feels Jaffar's, as she sends to Sarosh a lick, a tongue-rut alongside Jaffar's. 

_You're the one who asked!_ he tells her, moaning in delight as he spreads his legs further for Sarosh's caresses; now, Sarosh lifts and parts Jaffar's legs so that he can himself take a tongue to Jaffar's arse. All of Jaffar convulses at that, his legs kicking in Sarosh's powerful embrace; he cries out loud, panting into Sarosh's arse as he is taken by that inhumanly quick, slick and sinuous silver tongue. 

And taken he is, indeed: a shudder of disgust goes through Yassamin as Sarosh extends his tongue, far longer than a human's, as long as a dagger that he now plunges into Jaffar's arse. Like a narrow silvern prick, he thrusts it inside with such force it penetrates Jaffar immediately, and going by the way he now moves his head, he must be curling it inside of Jaffar, too, Jaffar's wails proving to Yassamin she must be right. Again, she closes her eyes and feels for him, and there, there: the silver curls inside of Jaffar just as--

\--and now, eager to share the sensation, Jaffar plunges the golden vines into Yassamin's arse, too: she jerks and whimpers through her nose, her back arching off the bed as she is so suddenly penetrated. 

And there they lie, taken by tongues of silver and gold: both panting and crying out helplessly as the tongues flicker inside of them, seeking out all their tendermost parts. Yassamin can feel the beginnings of orgasm in her hips--or are these those of Jaffar's?--rippling through her in waves, her toes curling at their power--

And it is then that Sarosh withdraws, the vines withdraw, leaving both her and Jaffar slouching on their respective beds, twitching, protesting loudly, turning the air blue with their cursing.

"It is exactly what you requested, my lord," Sarosh tells Jaffar as he shifts a little, giving him air; turning his tongue normal once more, he licks up Jaffar's cock, pumping it in his fist. Yet the tip of his tongue is still sharp, and with it, he now draws curlicues, calligraphies up Jaffar's prick, even dares dip it into the tip; Jaffar claws at the rug, sobbing, his hips jerking up into Sarosh's touch.

"Please, Sarosh," he groans, his knuckles white; "please, take me."

Yassamin does not even care for her lost orgasm, so mesmerised is she by the tenderness in Sarosh's eyes, his movements as he manouvers himself over Jaffar once more. With one hand, he cups Jaffar's face, never taking his eyes from his; one hand he keeps pressed to Jaffar's heart, with another he balances his own body, and with the fourth he wraps Jaffar's legs around his waist. For but a moment, he hovers there as he exposes Jaffar's arse and his own genitals so that Yassamin might see them perfectly; a hot shudder lashes through Yassamin from her womb as she watches Sarosh's cock trickling with oil, glistening as he poises it at Jaffar's entrance.

And it is some strange beast in Jaffar that wants to be punished, it seems: he never tells Sarosh to make his giant prick any smaller, even if he could; he chooses to ignore that mechanism entirely, asking Sarosh to take him like this, a sight so brutal it turns Yassamin's stomach. Little by little, Sarosh begins to push inside Jaffar's arse, Jaffar himself now completely silent underneath him, not breathing, even if he should do so to alleviate his pain. _This is for you, my love,_ he tells Yassamin instead, now sending to her the pain he feels: _in lieu of the lashes I did not give you, my sweet, my sweet,_ he laughs inside, delirious, mad. 

And this is all she can feel, hear; she now white herself from pain, that hideous cold sweat she so hates about sudden anal penetration now covering her skin as it covers Jaffar's. Even if Jaffar had been stretching his arse with the spheres earlier, even if he has plenty of experience at this art, he is still overwhelmed by a prick harder than a man's could ever be; Yassamin's eyes roll back so that she cannot see if Jaffar has been mad enough to call for the ridges to appear upon Sarosh's cock as well, but she would not put it past him. 

_You're a fool, my husband, a madman,_ she tells him; _we have suffered enough!_ "Please, Sarosh: pleasure. This is my command," she now says, gathering up the psychic reins in her hand and pulling on them for this moment. "Pleasure."

And it is then that the air is pierced by Jaffar's cry--one of pleasure indeed. For now, Sarosh begins to hum, to vibrate within him--so, that vibrating mechanism Yassamin had built into him finally works, now! Laughing, she takes in the ripples of his machinery as both she and Jaffar are returned to pleasure, the powerful vibrations of Sarosh's prick relaxing Jaffar's insides once more.

"As merciful as the Lord God himself," Jaffar slurs a drunkard, his arms falling lax onto the dais as Sarosh begins to take him, rolling his hips with the utmost gentleness; "Oh--" but Jaffar's voice breaks into a long, hedonistic moan as Sarosh finally buries himself in his body entire, his balls coming to rest between Jaffar's buttocks. 

And there, Sarosh holds him in his embrace, completely still: Yassamin can now feel him settling the entire weight of his body, the immense weight of his body over Jaffar's, crushing him into the stone of the dais. A sudden panic tries to rise in her, but that, too, is pressed from her by the exquisite sweetness of Sarosh's weight: a little part of her sobs inside at Jaffar now so sharing this with her, the comfort she loves best, knowing nothing like it in the world, nothing. The weight of her beloved on top of her, he penetrating her to the core, holding her in his arms: just as Sarosh now holds Jaffar, Jaffar holds Yassamin, taking her not only with his prick but his entire experience, the entirety of himself, two Jaffars now pressing all care from her as one. 

And within Jaffar, now, springs into movement that most wondrous of his inventions: Sarosh's cock, moving inside of Jaffar without Sarosh having to move his body at all, the shaft of him plunging in and out of Jaffar as he rests completely still on top of him. It is a most exquisite sensation, Jaffar sharing this with Yassamin, too; his prick drips between their bellies and simultaneously, Yassamin's own cunny trickles, pulsing between the ever-curling vines massaging her cunny. 

And here, it is she who is plunged into release first, feeling as she does Sarosh's strokes against the back of her own womb: the vines rub at her clitoris as hard as she rubs it herself whenever she takes herself with her hand, her orgasm bursting out of her a fountainous spray. She is glad of her bonds as she tosses there, cries hoarse, her entire body convulsing so violently she would otherwise be thrown off the bed; yet through the vines, Sarosh's weight presses her down, too, anchoring her with the gravity of Jaffar's love. On and on, she comes, sending to Jaffar the waves of her pleasure in turn; his eyes closed, Jaffar but leans back and drinks them in, letting them wash all over his body. 

Yet he does not let himself ejaculate yet, not yet, not yet: he but bathes in Yassamin's pleasure, letting it feed his own, letting it collect yet more sperm in his full and heavy sack, he stretching out his own pleasure, spinning it out as long as he can. 

But Yassamin will have none of this: she is now in physical pain thanks to Jaffar's restraint, thanks to him not having let the vines penetrate her cunny. Every time she has an orgasm only through her clitoris, or her arse without having been taken through the cunny first, her womb grows heavy with trapped blood: only a vaginal orgasm can release this dark blood packed into the womb, even the most powerful of anal orgasms unable to give a woman true relief from its weight. 

From the time he has spent as a woman, Jaffar knows this phenomenon as well as she does, knows the terrible ache that now stiffens the walls of her cunny and weighs down her womb as if it were poured full of lead: the cunny must always be taken first, the womb requiring at least one vaginal orgasm before a woman can be taken through the arse without leaving her writhing in discomfort after. And nothing that has been in the arse can be taken to the cunny without inflaming its sensitive membranes; therefore, a good lover always proceeds from cunny to arse, in that order.

Yet, has Jaffar now forgotten this in his greed? she thinks, reeling there in her frustration, her sodomy-orgasm having made the heaviness worse, she now bitterly regretting letting herself be pushed into it. Has he?

 _Not entirely,_ he groans into her mind. _It's just that--God,_ he moans inside. _He is good._

"Sarosh," she says, pointedly. "I want you to make him come. No protests, now, husband: I want to see you brought to release, or else I will not ride you," she says. 

Jaffar lifts his head, bleary. "You heard the lady," he says weakly.

And now, he lets Yassamin guide Sarosh, Yassamin herself shivering as she watches him move: such a powerful, heavy doll moving as lightly and as easily as a bird as it climbs over Jaffar. All of him guided by Yassamin's thoughts, by her vision of her husband taken: she adores Jaffar's groan as Sarosh kneels beside him and cups his genitals in two of his hands.

"Is this your will, mistress?" he asks in his soft, melodious voice.

"Yes, Sarosh. Show me his genitals as you pleasure them; I will tell you when to take him," she says, now also guiding the vines into stroking her clitoris once more.

For this is her perversion, she admits it: even if Sarosh's genitals are the most perfect genitals one could imagine, engineered to be as beautiful as a cock and a sack can be, she finds Jaffar's more beautiful still. Where Sarosh's prick is youthful, with his skin taut and firm, his veins only slightly raised from his prick's surface, Yassamin nevertheless loves her Jaffar's more: the softer, slightly looser skin that belies his age, the prominent veins upon its shaft like thick vines, the dark pomegranate redness of the tip that might seem strange to someone else, but which is to her always a sign of his utmost passion for her. In fact, it is by this colour that she knows he aches just as much as she does: her cunny must be of the same colour on the inside, now, a dark red; throbbing heavy and thick with the dark humours trapped within. 

And now, Sarosh takes Jaffar's balls in his hand and his cock in his mouth; Jaffar's hips come off the dais and he lets out a broken cry as the cleverly hidden tubes in Sarosh's mouth prove their usefulness. For now, Sarosh slickens the entirety of Jaffar's cock with the sticky, cherried oil Jaffar himself had chosen for today's lubricant: a glossy pink, Sarosh lets it pour out of the sides of his mouth and down Jaffar's prick, all the while pumping it in his fist. But he doesn't stop there: voluminous, he lets the fluid dribble all the way down into his cupping fingers, so that he can now massage it into the skin of Jaffar's sack, roll Jaffar's balls slickly in his hand. 

The very sight makes Yassamin's cunny tighten, tighten, tighten so violently she has to guide a fingersbreadth of a vine inside of her cunny so as not to die this very moment from her frustration: they're almost there, almost. Now, Jaffar's moans are continuous, he tossing and turning as if in a nightmare, one of Sarosh's hands pressing him down into the dais so that he cannot move; craftily, Sarosh fellates him, serves him with his hands, pulls his master to the very precipice of orgasm.

"Now, Sarosh," Yassamin rasps. 

It is mid-moan that Sarosh takes Jaffar by the waist and picks him up like a doll, manhandling him with the roughness Jaffar himself has programmed into him; soon enough, he has arranged Jaffar into a position that pleases Yassamin the most. This position has him prostrating as if in prayer, with his face down and braced on his crossed arms, with his arse in the air: the most gorgeous of poses, his anus itself clenching visibly in expectation, Jaffar whimpering as his slick, wet cock is now hanging there untouched, exposed to the air. And as Sarosh moves to cover him, the position is complete, now gifting Yassamin with the sight she has been deprived of for years: another man squatting atop her Jaffar, with his legs braced on either side of Jaffar's; the display perfected by the sight of Sarosh's thick, fat cock sinking mercilessly into Jaffar's arse.

With such swiftness does Sarosh enter Jaffar that Jaffar cannot even make a noise for the sensation, all of his body stiffening from being so overwhelmed; however, Yassamin can hear him casting binding-runes in his mind so as to keep himself from falling off the dais, his knees and his arms already slipping despite the roughness of the rug. He locks his body into position, willingly making of himself but a fleshly channel of pleasure: man, now made object--to pleasure an object! The perversity of this raises the hair on his arms, he choking back a cry as Sarosh now begins to truly take him, moving in and out of him with ease.

It's been such a long time since he's been taken by another man in this position, so long, so long. Now, since Yassamin does not have to be the one servicing him this way, she can enjoy the sight fully, thickening the psychic vine inside of her, shaping it into a golden prick, now taking herself in time with Sarosh's taking of Jaffar. And these are no gentle blows, no sweet lovemaking, this: she orders Sarosh to take Jaffar with the full weight of his body once more, ramming into him, knowing this position allows for the deepest of penetrations. Neither does she forget Sarosh's prick can touch Jaffar in all his best places, touch him where a real man cannot, enter him deeper than any real prick could. Therefore, she feels for those curves in his prick that press and massage not only Jaffar's prostate gland, but the other places upon a man's body where the greatest pleasure-nerves cluster: the gatekeeping muscles of his entrance, and that white-hot curve where rectum turns colon. 

Yes, his colon: even if she were not listening for Jaffar's sensations telepathically, she would be able to tell Sarosh was entering Jaffar's colon from the sheer hopelessness of the noises Jaffar now makes. Only when Sarosh has been taking him, only when Yassamin has been taking him with her hand has he ever made that noise: he weeps as softly as a child, barely present in his own consciousness any longer. Yassamin can hardly feel him at all, conscious thought having fled him completely, now: there is only instinct, only sensation, only his back arching, only the star-white pleasure at his core; only a pleasure sickening, transcendent, sublime.

Now that Yassamin is taking herself with a prick of some kind at least, she is able to spin the pleasure on for a little longer--and why not? It's what Jaffar had wanted, and unlike she or Fadl or any living human being, Sarosh can maintain this position for longer without being fatigued. On and on he keeps on squatting atop Jaffar, sinking into him with great ease; this time, Yassamin tells him to use his entire body for the thrusts, too. Only when she can hear the slap of Sarosh's balls against Jaffar's perineum is she satisfied with the depth and length and force of each thrust; only when the last of Jaffar's consciousness pours out of his mouth in sparkling streams of pleasure-howls, soaking into the rug does she find she is satisfied. This rut, she orders for Sarosh to continue for long moments; this, until Jaffar finally chooses to beg for mercy, she tells Jaffar.

Yet, to Yassamin's great amusement, even Jaffar cannot take this for very long: perhaps his old back is aching, perhaps his balls are indeed about to burst, so high and tight against his body Yassamin's mouth fills with saliva from the desire to taste them.

"Please," Jaffar cries, a broken little sound; "Please!" he howls as Yassamin fulfills her desire, now stepping out of her loosened bonds, coming to feast upon his sack with her mouth. 

She pretends not to hear him for a while, kneeling there as she strokes her clitoris, riding the magical cock she has engineered, now thickening it and lengthening it further to better massage the back of her womb; only upon his third "Please!" does she show him mercy, pulling back, licking her lips.

"Sarosh, I want you to come," she murmurs and presses a kiss to his balls, shockingly warm and real to her touch even in their hairless smoothness; "Come, and take him with you."

It is at that that Sarosh _bellows,_ a noise so terrible and so unlike anything she has ever heard that in his delirium, Jaffar thinks this is the noise dragons must make when they mate: then, even that thought leaves him as Sarosh throws himself into him in a final, devastating display of his strength. Sarosh roars, Jaffar whimpers, howls, a meek sound in comparison to the giant beast rutting atop him, Sarosh's mechanisms now making a churning noise from the power of his thrusts; Yassamin barely avoids being hit in the face as Sarosh grabs Jaffar's cock with one of his hands and begins to pump it in time with his thrusts. 

But now, from Sarosh bursts something Yassamin did not expect at all: cream. Sarosh, ejaculating thick streams of rich, warm cream, bursting out of Jaffar's arse with his thrusts: Jaffar's noises turn into high shrieks of shame and delight as his arse _sloshes,_ slurps with Sarosh's blows; cream splashing out of his guts all over his arse, all over his genitals, all over Yassamin's delighted face. 

She cannot even lap it up, so hard is Sarosh now thrusting into Jaffar, forcing him into coming this way: and it is indeed the perversity of this, the filthiness of it, the utter shamelessness of it that triggers Jaffar's orgasm. Howling, he is gone, all of him loosened into the storm of Sarosh's ravishing of him, a perfect imitation of his own ravishments, he experiencing exactly what Yassamin does in his own embrace. Jaffar's back arches once more, his belly rippling as Sarosh wrings his release out of him; voluminous, thick blasts of come now shoot from his cock onto the rug, mixing with the thinner white of Sarosh's cream. 

Cream and come, cream and come, splashing and mixing, an enormous mess all over Jaffar's arse and his genitals and the rug, white upon white until Yassamin cannot tell where Sarosh's ends and Jaffar's begins: all she can see is Jaffar trembling from ecstasy and fatigue, his stomach spasming, his thighs shaking as Sarosh pounds him dry, milks him dry.

Sarosh withdraws, and Jaffar draws in a tremulous breath; yet, when he tries to turn around, Yassamin stops him.

"Where do you think you're going?" she asks, smiling; both she and Sarosh still hold Jaffar in place, the tip of Sarosh's prick still nestled inside of Jaffar's arse.

Jaffar blinks. 

It is then that Yassamin sends to Sarosh her wish, rubbing herself, rubbing, riding her cock so that the waves of a true, deep orgasm begin to finally rise in her hips. Within its heat-ripples, she formulates this thought and articulates it, tells Sarosh what she wants him to do next, and lets go.

Sarosh moans through his lips and pins Jaffar down, Jaffar letting out a noise as his head is pressed unceremoniously into the dais; Sarosh grabs Yassamin by the hair and with another one of his hands, he prises her jaw open and pulls her closer to Jaffar's arse. And there, letting out a laughter as wicked and as evil as Jaffar's own, Sarosh ruts into Jaffar once more. Going by the noises Jaffar is making, Sarosh is shooting yet more cream inside of him, and soon enough, Yassamin can see more cream trickling out the sides of his arse, dribbling down Sarosh's balls. Wildly, Sarosh takes them both, the machine triumphant: Sarosh the brute, utterly dominant, perfect, their dream made silvern flesh.

"Push it out," Sarosh now says, gently, lightly, in a mocking croon, Jaffar's spent prick twitching, bobbing at the sound; "You know how to, my sweet," Sarosh purrs and pulls out. 

With an ecstatic, girl's cry, Jaffar does as he is told: he lifts his arse and pushes, purses, spurts out the cream from his arse. First, it but sloshes out, his arse gaping so much he cannot even close its muscles, unable to control them for them having been so stretched. Yet, determined, he keeps on rocking there, focusing, closing his eyes, and after a few more tries, he can finally do it: he purses out the rest of the cream in the most perfect of arcs straight over Yassamin's waiting face, her waiting tongue, straight into her moaning, gurgling mouth. Jaffar himself jerks in pleasure at each one of these moans, each of her gags, her spittings, her coughings; he turns to look at her over his shoulder and laughs in disbelieving delight as he watches his spray falling white over her face, trickling white down her neck, splashing white down onto her breasts.

It is then that Yassamin's pleasure peaks in turn: with a high cry, she falls upon Jaffar's arse, stuffing her tongue inside of his guts, devouring his taste from the inside; finally, finally she is allowed an orgasm in the cunny and nearly falls over from the power of her release. Her womb spasms so violently she shakes where she kneels, grateful for Sarosh's hand now holding her in place as he presses her face into Jaffar's arse; she sobs as she can feel the cream trickling down her hardened nipples, howls hopeless as Jaffar's arse farts out more cream, now from him being unable to close it. She can feel him almost saying sorry, almost; yet he can sense exactly how much delight she is deriving from those disgusting noises, the sprays of cream still splashing onto her tongue. By the time the last shivers of her orgasm have washed over her and left her body, dissolved into the air around her, she is absolutely exhausted, wrung dry. 

"Oh, my God," she moans as Sarosh lets go of her head and she can lower it against the dais; Jaffar thuds onto it before her, collapsing onto his side.

"Mmmgh," Jaffar says, gesturing to Sarosh, letting out one more fart of cream just to be disgusting, just to make Yassamin groan.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Murri](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murri_%28condiment%29) was a fermented barley sauce, apparently similar to modern soy sauce in taste. So, you know, feel free to imagine this idiot wizard daubing soy sauce into his sexbot twin's arse for ~authenticity.~ Because that's how ridiculous he is.


	6. Chapter 6

Sated, Jaffar and Yassamin lie there for a while, catching their breaths, letting the sweat dry upon their bodies. Eventually, however, Sarosh's presence becomes too much for them to bear, both of them now needing more intimacy. Now, the time has come for them to say goodbye to their silvern friend; Jaffar returns to the dais to inspect him before they put him away.

"Thank you," he says to Sarosh with a kiss, waving his hand over him, Sarosh flashing blue and white and red and again white as Jaffar's cleansing spell washes him clean all over. "You can go to sleep now," Jaffar tells him. 

Yassamin fancies Sarosh looks almost sad as he climbs off the dais and steps into his alcove once more; it must be but her imagination, her own guilt making this thought now spring into her mind.

"It has to be," Jaffar says, having heard her thoughts; he throws the velvet cover over Sarosh and climbs back into bed with Yassamin. "Now," he says, licking up a dried streak of cream from her breast, "About that ride of mine." 

"Let me rest for just a little while longer," she says, yelping as Jaffar casts the cleansing spell over their bodies, too.

"I'd rather taste only you, you see," Jaffar murmurs, kissing her breasts once more. "But, come; you can use me as your mattress," he says tenderly.

And since he does not insist that she take him just yet, she obliges: she rests her full weight atop him and stretches, letting her breathing even in his embrace. She is too tired to even listen to his mind very actively; she but lies there, open, her mind mingling with Jaffar's the way it always does in their moments of intimacy. 

The vines he had gifted her with are still there, but faintly, no longer even shaped like vines; all shapes and forms begin to melt as the energy returns to its amorphous essence. This essence having been but Love, Desire reaching out to touch, vibrations of pleasure concentrated into tendrils tangible enough to caress the other with. And it is now a slow and smooth love that the energy atomises into, a shimmering golden mist caressing their naked bodies, flowing with their slowly stirring movements, formed as it is of their own auras, commingled.

Softly, Yassamin rises, with such sweetness and grace that her each movement is become dance; pleasure and desire now so slow that they demand to be displayed in a manner elegant, a soft rounding out of each action, she and Jaffar both deriving pleasure from the act. Pleasure from her hand taking just a little longer than necessary to complete a movement, her fingers fanning just a little wider than necessary as she clasps Jaffar's prick: the roll of her hips a perfect arc as she takes him inside of herself, he sliding easily to the very root of her cunny. 

His prick, his prick; to Yassamin, it is not unlike the pillar around which a dervish twirls, hanging upon it and losing his self in the whirling ecstasy of God's emanation: Jaffar's love no more and no less than the Divine Presence now transpiercing her body and her soul. Anchored in his love, revolving around it her entire self dances, dances a dream of Babylon; she slides her hands up his chest and up his arms, gliding to again rest the entirety of her weight upon his body, in no hurry anywhere.

For this is their last joining of the evening; this, both of them know and understand: therefore, to rush it would be to shame it. Now, after all their wildness and all their violence, all their noise and their madness and their debauchery follow but simplicity and silence; after all their elaborate games, their imaginations and their perversities are now exhausted, laying open but the core of simple love and tenderness underneath. There remain but open mouths upon open mouths, hands laced in hands, but his cock in her cunny; now, they find their satiation not in hard, bruising ruts but the softest of undulations, the subtlest of tremors, the thrill of moans vibrating into ears pressed against tremulous mouths. 

There, she rides him until she is exhausted, until she is murmuring apologies into his mouth, unable to go on any longer. He, laughing, but snatches these apologies from her lips and rolls her onto her back, chuckling against her neck, saying he had been but waiting for the moment he could sate them both. 

And there, he takes her in the simplest way a man can take a woman, as Adam had taken Eve: he lowering his love into her, rolling himself into her, her feet slipping upon the smoothness of his back; the hardness of his bones nestled into her plush softness. 

"Ah--!" he cries, pausing there a little.

"What's wrong?"

"You know perfectly well what's wrong, woman," he says and drags his prick inside of her, then thrusts into her so deeply she yelps. "You just tried to slip something into my arse, you crafty wench. Did you not see how thoroughly Sarosh took me?" he groans.

"I'm sorry," she says, embarrassed. "I but thought to pleasure you, to make you come."

"I know," he says and kisses her nose. "I cannot _believe_ I am saying this, but I _am_ too sore for sodomy, my dear."

She but bursts into laughter at that, her cunny clenching with it so that now it's Jaffar's turn to yelp, she chuckling into his mouth. "I cannot believe it! Jaffar the Barmakid, turning down sodomy?"

"I know. Please, don't tell anyone," he says, mock-terrified. "I would lose my--" he grunts, beginning to thrust once more, "reputation--entirely!"

"I must--" she gasps, taking her hand to her cunny, "I must crack open a jug of the best Shiraz to mark the occasion."

"As a matter of fact, I have brought it with me," he says, now snatching her hand off her cunny, pinning both her wrists into the bed. "And I will not have you exert yourself," he declares with a grin. 

For it is now that he picks up the tendril she had tried to take him with, and guides it to rub at her cunny; she howls into his mouth as one shock of pleasure after another blasts through her body. Oh, but it's marvellous, Jaffar now pacing the tendril's rubs so that they alternate with his thrusts; so that her womb ripples, lifts with these pleasure-waves each time he withdraws. 

_Show-off,_ she moans into his mind, swooning from the joy of it all; but then, all of her thoughts are submerged by the rising heat of the pleasure he is giving her, now more profound than anything else she has felt tonight.

Indeed, now that she is finally being taken in the cunny by a proper prick, the love and the weight of Jaffar's body behind it, truly hitting the root of her womb has she finally arrived upon the door of complete satisfaction. Her cunny is alive with sensation, its walls so slick and so hot and so swollen each one of Jaffar's strokes feels incredible: each one a caress of hot sparks across her cunny's membranes, these all surging further and further up her body, rising like flames unto the very top of her head. Her heartbeat gallops in her ears, Jaffar now moving faster as if he wanted to catch up with her heart--he, too, now pulsing, surging through her veins; and oh, he is, he _is,_ she tells him, Jaffar surging through her within each flutter of her cunny, each rush and flush of blood from her sex to her hips to her chest to her fingertips. 

_All of me, you have taken, all of me entire,_ she sings, sobs, her throat hurting as she cries out her last; _all of me, my beloved sweet, all of me; do not leave me here alone. Come with me, Jaffar; come with me, my love: drench me, drown me, bury me in your love._

And it is then that he lifts her, rushing into her so that she no longer knows gravity, her very self somersaulting in him as he scoops her up into his self: she a swallow spinning, looping, plunging and soaring in the heaven that is he. Heaven, heaven, he a heaven shining bright, both of them rising weightless, as light as feathers; feathers, feathers, sunlight golden upon the Simurgh's wing they float there, silent, replete. 

Only faintly does she hear herself screaming, her body convulsing one last time as she swallows his sperm into herself; his own cries ringing in her ears as he empties himself into her, surging into her far deeper than his seed ever could, Jaffar, Jaffar the rush of blood ringing in her ears. He, too, somersaulting, spinning and spinning as he travels paths venous and arterial, sparks up and down each nerve; he laughing as innocently and as gladly as a child as Yassamin now rushes into him in turn, a flush of heat through his heart, his limbs, his sex.

His sex plunging into her, he again returns her energy to her, pulse after golden pulse travelling through both their bodies as their souls do, until no cell remains untouched by its heat. Glowing, glowing they hover there together, hang heavy in the bed together, as light as lead and as heavy as air; rolling and rolling there upon the sheets until there is no Jaffar, no Yassamin, them become but the one body sporting there, rejoicing in its own play.

 _Just as the Creator enjoys his own creation,_ Jaffar now thinks into her--or was it she? It is no matter. "For I loved to be known," Jaffar now murmurs into her ear those words God is supposed to have said of His Creation: that it was for the pleasure of being known, being loved, for the joy of Loving itself that He had created ideas, things, beings.

"And through you, I have known Him," she says, kissing Jaffar's hand; no matter how many times she has told Jaffar this, she can never repeat it enough. She forever his mirror, he forever hers: just like they say that in the womb, certain pairs of twins were but the one human being before being split in two--and thus, identical the day they emerge from the womb.

Jaffar's eyes snap open and playfully, he presses his hand to her mouth. "Before you start worrying about the children again," he grins, sighing happily as he slips out of her, gathering her into his embrace. 

She takes his hand from her mouth. "Can we at least go and have a look at them?" she asks. She is exhausted, but she would not go to sleep without knowing Salsabil and Anwar were well.

He closes his eyes and groans. "The crystal is upstairs."

"Psychically, then."

"I haven't the energy," he mumbles into his arm. "I thought I'd get the wine from the cabinet just now, you see, but the fact of the matter is, I would rather sleep," he says with a jaw-cracking yawn. "I'm--I'm too tired to even pray," he says and yawns once more.

She nudges him with her elbow. "Husband. We can do it through our dreams." Sending one's soul to a loved one's bedside is one of the easiest spells to master, something even people with no magical skills can perform--with God's grace--if they have but a true passion and a true need for it. Even her tribal Arab ancestresses could do it if they were deeply in love, or, like Yassamin is now, concerned for their children. 

But she would not do it alone. "Husband," she says, nudging him again when he pretends to be asleep. "I need your help."

"All right," he mumbles, his lips barely moving. "But you perform the cleansing spell."

Rather pointedly, she performs it with extreme, meticulous detail: briefly, she slips the heat of the cleansing flames even into Jaffar's arse, he letting out a shriek so loud it echoes off the vaulted ceiling. 

"Now I'm most _definitely_ awake," he mumbles.

"I can put you to sleep," she grins and pulls the nearest blanket over them both. "Say your prayers."

"Only after we've checked upon the children."

"You can't pray in your sleep!"

"Blasphemer! Sufis do it all the time. A true friend of God makes everything he does into worship. Even his dreams."

She rolls her eyes. "All right. But if you fail, I'm going to make sure you make up for the lost prayers later."

"How many prayers have we missed so far?" he says and grins, twiddling his toes. "We _have_ been rather busy."

"Well..." she says, casting down her eyes. She had been _meaning_ to keep a tally, so that they might make up after their holiday, but... "I've lost count," she mumbles.

"There. Hypocrite," he says, but there is no true scolding to his voice; he kisses her hair. "Besides, you should have learned by now that I never keep count."

"That settles it. We _will_ perform the Hajj this year," she mumbles. "We're going to have to, with the amount of sins we've accrued."

"Now you're talking like the heathens again--we don't accrue karma, my sweet. Besides, I've already been to Mecca. Twice. First with my father and Fadl, then with that bastard, Harun--"

"I thought we were supposed to go to sleep!"

"I would have, had you not started a theological debate!"

"All right, all right," she says and closes her eyes, determined to fall asleep despite Jaffar's chuckling beside her.

For long moments, they lie there, she focusing with all her might: but as was to be expected, this but makes falling asleep harder. And the most infuriating thing is that she knows--can _feel_ Jaffar smirking beside her, waiting for her to react.

It is then that the silence is broken by a long, thorough, ripping fart.

_"Jaffar!"_

" _You_ put that air in there, woman!"

"Or Sarosh, rather," she grumbles. "He pumped you full of it, not me. Come, Jaffar, do you care for your children _at all?!_ "

"I do, I do," he says, now cupping her head with his hand. "Let me make it up to you. Close your eyes."

And it is now he who takes mercy upon her, casting his familiar sleep-spell upon them. All right, so this is cheating a little, but by now, Yassamin is too tired to resist: all she cares about is that she is still conscious enough to navigate the paths and gateways of the spirit world. 

And there, upon the spirit-plane, she and Jaffar perform the old spell of _rolling up the earth_ , of travelling great distances with the earth moving underneath their feet, the road shortened at a rapid pace like a carpet rolled up before them. And it is no great distance, this, unlike those times when they have visited Balkh or even Baghdad: the Afrasiyab castle is situated upon a hill just across the river, its pleasure lodges and pavilions--including the new garden with its fountains--nestled in the bosom of the green valley beneath.

It is in one of these small lodges, ones belonging to the women of the household, that their magic now guides them to. For each mother's heart is forever tied to her children's hearts by an unbreakable, golden thread, visible only within the spirit-world: it is this thread they have now followed through hill and valley to the house where their children lay. It is a little wooden pavilion of modest build, little more than a napping-chamber for the royal ladies for when they are weary from their hunting-trips, a place to rest in the noonday heat.

"But they'll freeze!" Yassamin exclaims as she sees the building--even if it's almost summer and the weather is by no means cold.

"I doubt that," Jaffar tells her, hushing her gently; even if they are ghosts, they might still alert the dozen burly eunuchs standing guard outside the pavilion.

The building has but three rooms, it seems: there's a small kitchen, a smaller bathroom--this, too, engineered by Jaffar to have running water--but the majority of the house is taken up by one large resting-chamber. Wide divans line its walls, and upon them sleep half a dozen serving-maids, two more eunuchs keeping watch at the room's door; finally, at the very back of the room lays a large bed and in it, Salsabil and Anwar.

Salsabil, always a restless sleeper, has tossed and turned until each one of her five plaits points in a different cardinal direction; Anwar sleeps more calmly, on his back, his tunic having ridden up to his armpits, exposing his little belly.

"See?" Jaffar whispers. "They don't look cold at all."

"You never know," Yassamin whispers and pulls Anwar's tunic down just as she would do at home, careful not to wake him. "A sudden cold breeze might find them in the night. You know how the djinn like to prey on little children," she frowns.

But it is then that she gasps: as if on cue, a dark shadow leaps into the bed and glides towards the children. Jaffar pulls his arm back, ready to cast a spell, to blast the intruder into smithereens--

Except this is none other than Ishtiaq, now nudging Salsabil's face with his nose, letting out a little chirp of concern.

"G' sleep, 'stq," Salsabil mumbles, patting at the cheetah with her hands, half asleep, completely unaware of her parents hovering beside the bed. After another concerned grumble, Ishtiaq does as he is told, curling up beside her.

Anwar smacks his lips in his sleep. "Cherries," he smiles, "cherries and cream," he murmurs and licks his lips, then falls into a deeper sleep once more.

Yassamin gives Jaffar a mortified glance. There's only one place a scent of cherries and cream could have come from.

Jaffar refuses to look at her, staring at his feet instead.

_...there are places even your cleansing-spells do not reach, woman. You yourself saw how deep Sarosh reached. I think it's only just coming out, now..._

But now she laughs so loudly that the spell is broken and they are back in the shabestan: wide awake, she laughs so hysterically there are tears in her eyes, she bent double from her guffawing. 

"Think--" she gasps, unable to even form sentences, so violently is she laughing, as if she had taken hashish; "Oh, God, I--"

"What?!" Jaffar growls, his face as red from embarrassment as Yassamin's is from laughter; furiously, he wafts the blanket to dissipate the unwanted expulsion of cherry-scented gas.

"If--if you were invited to prove your magic skills in front of other sorcerers and you'd--if your arse would--if your arse would do _that,_ " she howls. "Jaffar the Barmakid, the greatest sodomite in the history of all magicians! Maybe you could--" she cackles even as Jaffar begins to swat at her with a pillow, "could create an entire school of magic out of that. The Brotherhood of the Fresh--" she guffaws, "the Fresh Spring Breeze."

"Woman!" he moans and now covers his own face with the pillow, and she is sure she can still hear some last bubbling, wet noises from underneath the blanket.

"I'm sorry. But you have to admit it's hysterical."

"As long as you don't tell the children."

"Never," she says, wiping her eyes. It would mean them finding out about Sarosh, and the details of Jaffar and Yassamin's erotic games--the children most certainly aren't ready to find out about such things yet, not for at least another five years. "Oh, my God."

"I'm not going to sit here and listen to this," Jaffar grumbles and leaps out of bed.

"Where are you going?"

"The Shiraz," he says, fetching the jug and a drinking-bowl from the ice cabinet. "I knew I was going to need it."

She holds out the bowl as he pours the cold, fragrant wine into it, still shaking so much from her laughter that she spills a few drops. "I'm sorry."

"Nevermind," he says and sets the jug down--but it is he who insists on drinking from the bowl first, nearly emptying it in one gulp. "There. Get this down you, woman; otherwise you'll never get to sleep."

They _are_ indeed so restless they will probably need to drink themselves into a stupor before they can calm down: perhaps it is all this mad debauchery they've been indulging in, so rare in their lives these days that it has loosened their sanity tonight.

"I'm inclined to agree with you," Jaffar says when he refills the bowl, having again heard her thoughts. "But, still..." he says and puts away the jug once more. "A toast," he says and takes the bowl from her, holding it out. "To eleven years of this love-madness, and to a hundred and eleven years more," he says, his eyes glimmering warm over the bowl's brim. "Farts and all."

" _Two hundred and twenty-two_ years more," she says as he lifts the bowl to her lips; "I insist."

"Three hundred and thirty-three, and nothing less!" he declares, emptying the bowl with a deep gulp, his crooked teeth gleaming a bright white past his now-reddened lips as he turns to smile at her. "Failing that, an eternity; but I will take what I can get. Come here, wife."

"It's settled, then," she says and leans into his embrace, kissing him long and sweet. "An eternity, and nothing less."

"Let anyone just try and stop me," he murmurs onto her lips, kissing her once, twice, thrice, countless times until he is finally sated, yawning so loudly she can hear his jaw creaking. "And now, my dearly beloved," he slaps her on the arse, "to sleep."

She smacks his buttocks with both hands. "I love you, you big old fool," she says, nuzzling his face with her nose. "I..."

"Yes?" he says as he pulls her to lie down beside himself, he pulling the blanket over them both.

She laces her fingers with his. "I only want you to know that I would not change a single day of this. Not a single day would I give away--even of this exile. You are the greatest blessing ever to have come my way. To think what my life would have been without you--"

"Shh," he says and squeezes her hand. "I know. It's too terrible to think about," he says. "Therefore, let us not. Will you now be able to sleep?"

"I think so," she says, she, too, now yawning loudly. "Never better than when I have my own pard sleeping next to me in my bed," she smiles.

"And he never sleeps better than in the shade of his sweet jasmine," he murmurs into her hair, draping his arm over her shoulders. "Good night, my beloved sweet; know that nothing makes me happier than the prospect of waking up to the sunrise of your face upon the morrow, God willing."

"Good night, husband sweet. Know that--" she yawns again. "Love you," she but mumbles, whatever noble poetic metaphor she had been about to utter now utterly loosened from her and drifting away, she finally slipping into the realm of sleep easy and sweet.

Jaffar but chuckles and places upon her head a sweet, tender kiss, his love covering her like wings.

***

END

***

**Author's Note:**

> Promo post for the fic [here.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/156911119588/fic-a-lovers-harvest-part-16)
> 
> Some quick illustrations in doodle form:
> 
> [Some doodles](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/156371619333/jaffarprincess-lovemakings-that-may-or-may-not) I drew before writing the last chapter, of that part where Yassamin sneakily tries to insinuate a vine into Jaffar's bottom.
> 
> [Some more doodles](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/157099409558/doodle-tiemz-1-falcon-has-to-have-the-greatest) of Jaffar and Yassamin "rolling up the earth" and their well-shagged, slurping bits.
> 
> [And this set of doodles](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/post/157054758603/aaand-some-more-doodle-fills-1-jaffar-knows-what) features an illustration of Jaffar pushing those beads out while Yassamin dangles before him, and a bit from an earlier chapter where he checks to see if he's bound her comfortably. :3 
> 
> All chapter promo posts and possible future illustrations can be found on my Tumblr's [A Lovers' Harvest tag.](http://aikainkauna.tumblr.com/tagged/a-lovers'-harvest) I have had people ask if they're rebloggable/commentable or whatever, and of course they are--feel free to peruse them and enjoy them to your heart's content. And as it's a tiny and quiet fandom, comments are always cherished :)


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